Yvonne Webb

For­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is de­mand­ing to know why casi­nos op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go are not be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed. He claims some casi­nos are a prin­ci­pal source of mon­ey laun­der­ing. Man­ning, who had at­tempt­ed to phase out the op­er­a­tions of casi­nos dur­ing his tenure, said the state of emer­gency pro­vid­ed pow­ers for the au­thor­i­ties to raid casi­nos which were be­ing al­lowed to pro­lif­er­ate all over the coun­try un­der the cov­er of pri­vate mem­bers clubs. At his sec­ond news con­fer­ence in one week at his San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy of­fice, Man­ning said some casi­nos had been linked to the drug trade.

He based his find­ings on the tes­ti­mo­ny of the Chief of Op­er­a­tions of the Unit­ed States Drug En­force­ment Agency be­fore the US House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. He al­so read the ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry of a joint re­port of the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime and the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gion of the World Bank on March 2007, which said the Caribbean was sus­cep­ti­ble to mon­ey laun­der­ing. The re­port iden­ti­fied the Caribbean's phys­i­cal lo­ca­tion and the op­por­tu­ni­ty pro­vid­ed, through the tourism sec­tor, to trans­port un­de­tect­ed large sums of dirty mon­ey and es­tab­lished that some lo­cal casi­nos and cur­ren­cy ex­change hous­es were said to be a ma­jor chan­nel.

It al­so stat­ed it had the ef­fect of un­der­min­ing and cor­rupt­ing so­ci­etal in­sti­tu­tions. Man­ning added: "The last one, un­der­min­ing and cor­rupt­ing so­ci­etal in­sti­tu­tions, is par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous. It goes at the very fab­ric of the ba­sis of our democ­ra­cy. "The drug trade is very lu­cra­tive and one of the prob­lems that those in­volved in the drug trade face is the "sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ties of mon­ey that come in­to their pos­ses­sion. "They couldn't take this mon­ey to the bank be­cause of the fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions. What they seek to do is pass that mon­ey though le­git­i­mate busi­ness and when it comes out of the oth­er end it is le­git­i­mate mon­ey." he claimed. Man­ning said Gov­ern­ment could not say that casi­nos have not had the at­ten­tion of law en­force­ment agen­cies be­cause of ev­i­dence.

Man­ning re­called that at the last news con­fer­ence he raised the is­sue of the dis­cov­ery of com­pressed mar­i­jua­na in a con­tain­er mixed with car parts and con­signed to a com­pa­ny in San Fer­nan­do; the dis­cov­ery of com­pressed mar­i­jua­na in a con­tain­er, con­signed to an­oth­er com­pa­ny in Freeport; and the al­le­ga­tions made by pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Coun­cil (Natuc), Michael Anisette, about 13 con­tain­ers con­tain­ing drugs on the port. The PNM MP said since he raised those is­sues, there have been a si­lence from the au­thor­i­ties. He said there were now plans to re­fer the mat­ter to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He could not say whether Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley or him­self would re­fer the mat­ter.