Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Se­cu­ri­ty has been in­creased for all the peo­ple who were tar­get­ed in as­sas­si­na­tion plots or­gan­ised by a crime syn­di­cate op­er­at­ing from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison - in­clud­ing min­is­ters who were al­so tar­get­ed.

This was con­firmed by in­tel­li­gence/se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials in­volved in State of Emer­gency (SoE) op­er­a­tions yes­ter­day.

In­tel­li­gence sources con­firmed that a hand­ful of gangs whose lead­ers are in jail unit­ed re­cent­ly - af­ter the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion - and the gen­e­sis of the SoE was push­back by crim­i­nal el­e­ments against the new Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment’s bid to clean up and dis­man­tle gang con­trol of so­cial pro­grammes.

These are the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP), Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and the Reaf­foresta­tion Pro­gramme.

In tan­dem with that were plans for the as­sas­si­na­tion of cer­tain tar­gets - in­clud­ing per­sons in the le­gal pro­fes­sion in­stru­men­tal in cer­tain on­go­ing cas­es. At­tacks were al­so planned on cer­tain (named) le­gal ju­ris­dic­tions and state build­ings “to dis­tract from” a planned prison break.

On how close the jail break was be­fore the SoE arose, of­fi­cials said, “Very.”

Soon af­ter the Gov­ern­ment took of­fice, min­is­ters had spo­ken about al­leged cor­rup­tion in the so­cial pro­grammes and changes were be­ing in­sti­tut­ed.

On Mon­day in Par­lia­ment, while speak­ing on the SoE’s ex­ten­sion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke about CEPEP con­tracts and the lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty Gov­ern­ment be­lieves was be­ing en­abled through CEPEP.

It has been con­firmed that the same lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty ex­ist­ed in the URP and Reaf­foresta­tion pro­grammes.

Sources said pres­sure was now be­ing ex­ert­ed on some, de­mand­ing con­tin­u­a­tion of “ghost gangs,” want­i­ng names main­tained and ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of “in­ter­fer­ing with their mon­ey.” How­ev­er, Gov­ern­ment re­fused to com­ply with the “or­ders.”

On Mon­day in Par­lia­ment, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie had said the Gov­ern­ment ad­vised Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo to de­clare the SoE af­ter re­ceiv­ing in­tel­li­gence re­ports which told of plots to as­sas­si­nate “key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials,” mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry/jus­tice sys­tem and law en­force­ment mem­bers, and al­so to at­tack state build­ings.

On Tues­day in the Sen­ate, Je­re­mie al­so ref­er­enced “a prison break,” in de­fend­ing the choice of the Ch­aguara­mas fa­cil­i­ties to re­lo­cate the 10 high-risk in­mates who were trans­ferred from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison when the SoE be­gan.

In­tel­li­gence of­fi­cials said while the TTPS’ first SoE me­dia brief­ing on Ju­ly 18 in­di­cat­ed no po­lit­i­cal fig­ures were at risk, what Je­re­mie said on Mon­day about “key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials” as as­sas­si­na­tion tar­gets was cor­rect, since new in­for­ma­tion and in­tel­li­gence re­ports con­tin­ued com­ing in and “it is still un­fold­ing.”

They said while the hand­ful of lo­cal (named) gangs are in­volved, not all per­sons af­fil­i­at­ed with gangs were part of the plot.

It was con­firmed that Venezue­lan transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion Tren de Aragua (TDA) - de­scribed as hav­ing over­tak­en con­trol of the south/west­ern penin­su­la - is as­sist­ing gangs with fire­pow­er “among oth­er things.

Venezue­lan cul­prits have al­so been nabbed in SoE op­er­a­tions. De­por­ta­tion or­ders have been signed where nec­es­sary, it was con­firmed.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der was mum on the in­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion. Alexan­der on­ly said, “I’ll feel more em­pow­ered to cel­e­brate Eman­ci­pa­tion when the evil of hu­man traf­fick­ing is erad­i­cat­ed - it’s the 21st cen­tu­ry ver­sion of slav­ery and has be­come the ‘big mon­ey spin­ner for gangs’.”

Oth­er of­fi­cials as­sess­ing the CEPEP, URP and Reaf­foresta­tion op­er­a­tions con­firmed “a clear and present dan­ger” arose due to the gang cul­ture in­vad­ing the pro­grammes. They cit­ed the ex­pan­sion of URP and oth­er pro­grammes two months be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“This coun­try spends up to $150 mil­lion on one pro­gramme like URP and those who need it aren’t ben­e­fit­ing. Many de­pend on these jobs as their sole in­come but can­not get the op­por­tu­ni­ty due to the pro­gramme be­ing over­tak­en by gangs. This must be re­struc­tured for the bona fide to ben­e­fit,” one source said.

On the per­cent­age of the URP con­trolled by gangs, they said the two Port-of-Spain ar­eas and Laven­tille West caters for 100 work crews. Sources cit­ed URP’s his­to­ry of an uptick of vi­o­lence every time a gov­ern­ment changes “un­til there’s com­pli­ance.” They point­ed to the is­sues with slain URP “boss­es” Mark Guer­ra and Bill Fran­cis years ago.

They claimed that two cur­rent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers - one north-based per­son reap­point­ed in PNM’s June ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion and one south­ern­er, new­ly ap­point­ed - had had URP jobs.

Op­po­si­tion PNM leader Pen­ny Beck­les didn’t re­ply to queries on this yes­ter­day. PNM elec­tion of­fi­cer In­dar Paras­ram, who was the URP’s pro­gramme man­ag­er up to dis­missal in June, didn’t re­ply to calls.