Of­ten times in a dis­cus­sion around stock mar­ket ac­tiv­i­ty there is ref­er­ence to a “herd men­tal­i­ty”. This is the ten­den­cy to fol­low an es­tab­lished group or pat­tern of be­hav­ior with­out the crit­i­cal think­ing that an evolv­ing sit­u­a­tion would de­mand.

How T&T as a coun­try has re­act­ed to the re­cent events in Venezuela pro­vides a prime ex­am­ple of the “herd men­tal­i­ty” in a non-fi­nan­cial mar­ket con­text.

Here are some in­con­tro­vert­ible facts.

Last week, the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment an­nounced the of­fi­cial clo­sure of the He­li­coide, a Cara­cas prison apt­ly named be­cause it was doc­u­ment­ed over the years by a UN fact-find­ing mis­sion as a pri­ma­ry site for tor­tur­ing po­lit­i­cal dis­si­dents.

Let me re­peat so that you don’t gloss over this. The Maduro regime has held and tor­tured po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers for years. The regime un­der Del­cy Ro­driguez, as com­pelled by the Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­tro­duced leg­is­la­tion to al­low amnesty for po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers. This again is a fac­tu­al ad­mis­sion that thou­sands of peo­ple were held for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons.

Here is an­oth­er in­con­tro­vert­ible fact which you may not know from our lo­cal me­dia and the cadre of ex­perts, ed­i­tors and an­a­lysts that pro­vide you with in­for­ma­tion. Venezuela’s 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was fraud­u­lent.

The op­po­si­tion pub­lished over 80 per cent of polling sta­tion tal­ly sheets. In­de­pen­dent re­views by The Wash­ing­ton Post, The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and The Carter Cen­ter sug­gest­ed these tal­lies were re­al and it showed Ed­mun­do González win­ning ap­prox­i­mate­ly 67 per cent of the vote against Maduro’s 30 per cent. Maduro de­clared him­self the win­ner of the elec­tion with­out the pub­li­ca­tion of any polling sta­tion lev­el da­ta.

I will of­fer you a third in­con­tro­vert­ible fact. In April 2024, the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment ar­rest­ed Tareck El Ais­sa­mi. He was a for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent and Oil Min­is­ter un­der the Maduro regime. He was ar­rest­ed on cor­rup­tion charges in­volv­ing monies em­bez­zled from PDVSA.

You may be read­ing about this for the first time but none of this is new.

The UN fact-find­ing mis­sion be­gan doc­u­ment­ing sys­tem­at­ic tor­ture in 2020. The In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court in 2020 found rea­son­able grounds to be­lieve the Maduro gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted crimes against hu­man­i­ty since at least April 2017. These are crimes of de­ten­tion, tor­ture, and mur­der by the state.

The or­ga­ni­za­tion Foro Pe­nal has tracked po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers for over a decade. The US Trea­sury des­ig­nat­ed El Ais­sa­mi a Spe­cial­ly Des­ig­nat­ed Nar­cotics Traf­fick­er since 2017. The De­part­ment of Jus­tice in­dict­ed him for nar­co-ter­ror­ism in 2020. The US State De­part­ment post­ed a US$10 mil­lion boun­ty on his head.

The al­le­ga­tions per­sist­ed for at least a decade. The ev­i­dence was al­ways there. What changed in 2026 is that ac­tions are tak­ing place to con­firm what was sus­pect­ed.

A flawed nar­ra­tive

These al­le­ga­tions from pri­or years, which we now know to be true, were not broad­ly present in our na­tion­al dis­course when the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion and his En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young were ac­tive­ly ne­go­ti­at­ing with the Maduro regime.

For some rea­son, the coun­try as a whole choose si­lence when our lead­ers were deal­ing with crim­i­nals and peo­ple who tor­ture po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

De­spite the de­nials, my own use of ship-track­ing da­ta al­lowed me to con­clude that T&T fa­cil­i­tat­ed the move­ment of gaso­line to Venezuela dur­ing the COVID pe­ri­od. This was es­sen­tial­ly the break­ing of US sanc­tions. Un­der a veil of se­cre­cy, we wel­comed Venezuela’s sanc­tioned Vice Pres­i­dent, Del­cy Ro­driguez, to our shores.

Our then En­er­gy Min­is­ter Young, trav­elled to Cara­cas on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions to ne­go­ti­ate the Drag­on gas field agree­ment. His coun­ter­part for those dis­cus­sions was Tareck El Ais­sa­mi. At least one Reuters re­port con­firmed meet­ings be­tween the two.

I want you to ap­pre­ci­ate this point. In fi­nan­cial ser­vices, in­sti­tu­tions are pro­hib­it­ed from en­gag­ing with in­di­vid­u­als on sanc­tions watch­lists. An of­fi­cer who fa­cil­i­tat­ed such deal­ings would face dis­missal and like­ly pros­e­cu­tion. Yet our then Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, ful­ly em­pow­ered by his Prime Min­is­ter, had no is­sue sit­ting across the ta­ble from a man on a “want­ed list”.

The in­for­ma­tion about El Ais­sa­mi was pub­licly avail­able since 2017. When El Ais­sa­mi was fi­nal­ly ar­rest­ed in April 2024, it was not by U.S. au­thor­i­ties. It was, through an act of self preser­va­tion, by Maduro’s own gov­ern­ment, on cor­rup­tion charges re­lat­ed to PDVSA.

None of this fazed most of the com­men­ta­tors and an­a­lysts in this coun­try. The ar­gu­ment was sim­ple: Trinidad and To­ba­go is a sov­er­eign na­tion en­ti­tled to de­ter­mine its own align­ments and pur­sue its own in­ter­ests. We need­ed Drag­on gas for our eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty. The ends jus­ti­fied the means.

Many were hap­py to move for­ward on that ba­sis.

The com­pro­mise

What do you think would be our sit­u­a­tion had we got­ten ac­cess to any Drag­on gas un­der Maduro? For in­sight let’s look at our bal­anc­ing act as it re­lat­ed to the Venezue­lan mi­grants.

As Venezuela’s eco­nom­ic col­lapse in­ten­si­fied, T&T host­ed the largest Venezue­lan di­as­po­ra per capi­ta in the re­gion. We com­plained some­what, but not to the Maduro regime. There we main­tained a pol­i­cy of “diplo­mat­ic neu­tral­i­ty”.

To avoid up­set­ting Cara­cas, the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion han­dled the mi­grant sit­u­a­tion with a very soft touch. It was clear that sig­nif­i­cant de­por­ta­tions and a re­fusal to grant any le­gal sta­tus would have sent a sig­nal to Maduro. Our ap­proach was to mes­sage that Trinidad and To­ba­go would not be­come a plat­form for po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion or in­ter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion of his regime.

The pri­ma­ry dri­ver of this com­pli­ance was the Drag­on gas deal. Fac­ing de­clin­ing do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion, our econ­o­my was po­si­tioned by our then lead­er­ship as be­ing ex­is­ten­tial­ly de­pen­dent on se­cur­ing gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on field.

It is an in­con­tro­vert­ible fact that by late 2025, this “de­pen­den­cy” was weaponised by the Maduro regime. When T&T per­mit­ted US mil­i­tary as­sets to tran­sit for re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­er­cis­es, Maduro re­spond­ed by ter­mi­nat­ing all en­er­gy agree­ments.

When this re­ac­tion oc­curred, the lo­cal dis­course was ex­clu­sive­ly on the role of the new T&T Gov­ern­ment in jeop­ar­diz­ing the Drag­on Deal. Fool­ish­ly, there was ab­solute­ly no analy­sis as to what the re­ac­tion from Cara­cas im­plied had we got­ten such a deal through a Maduro/Row­ley-Young arrange­ment.

The stance by Venezuela in late 2025 high­light­ed what might be called the “se­cu­ri­ty trap” that T&T de­lib­er­ate­ly and naive­ly sought to place our­selves in.

To keep the po­ten­tial for Drag­on gas, T&T had to re­main a pas­sive part­ner in Venezue­lan af­fairs, of­ten at the ex­pense of our re­la­tion­ship with Guyana, and our own bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and hu­man­i­tar­i­an stand­ing. This is a clear and log­i­cal con­clu­sion based on the ev­i­dence be­fore us.

Let’s now take this a step fur­ther.

What is again in­con­tro­vert­ible is that be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad is a ma­jor nar­co trans­ship­ment route. Large ship­ments of co­caine and il­le­gal firearms move in­to T&T from Venezuela. This has been es­tab­lished since the Scott Drug Re­port.

If we are to judge by the way we han­dled the mi­grant sit­u­a­tion it is rea­son­able to sug­gest that had the Drag­on deal been ful­ly op­er­a­tional un­der Maduro’s tenure, the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of the drug trade would like­ly have in­ten­si­fied.

The in­fra­struc­ture of the sub­sea pipeline would have re­quired a shared se­cu­ri­ty zone. Giv­en the doc­u­ment­ed in­volve­ment of the Venezue­lan se­cu­ri­ty and en­er­gy sec­tor ap­pa­ra­tus in the drug trade and mon­ey laun­der­ing, this shared se­cu­ri­ty zone could be in­ad­ver­tent­ly used to pro­vide fur­ther cov­er for smug­gling ves­sels to op­er­ate.

To ad­dress the trade, T&T would have need­ed to share in­tel­li­gence about Venezue­lan ac­tors with the Unit­ed States as we have been re­cent­ly do­ing. This would of course be a risky ap­proach if we were de­pen­dent on Maduro for an in­creas­ing per­cent­age of our gas sup­ply.

You may see this as spec­u­la­tion, but I am po­si­tion­ing it as a log­i­cal ex­ten­sion of the ar­chi­tec­ture we were build­ing. One would be hard­pressed to come to an al­ter­na­tive con­clu­sion.

The Drag­on gas deal as pre­vi­ous­ly con­struct­ed was not just a gas sup­ply con­tract. It bound­ed us to a Venezue­lan regime that was rogue by any stan­dard of mea­sure­ment. The events of Jan­u­ary 2026 have dis­man­tled that teth­er. They have al­so re­vealed the scale of the crim­i­nal en­ter­prise even if you wish to be naïve and ig­nore the di­rect in­volve­ment of Maduro and his in­ner cir­cle.

What re­mains is the ques­tion of in­tel­lec­tu­al hon­esty. I am re­fer­ring to the po­lit­i­cal, ed­i­to­r­i­al and an­a­lyst class in T&T that ac­cept­ed these ear­li­er com­pro­mis­es on the ba­sis of sov­er­eign­ty. Those that dis­missed con­cerns about El Ais­sa­mi’s des­ig­na­tion, that ra­tio­nalised en­gage­ment with a regime the ICC found rea­son­able grounds to be­lieve com­mit­ted crimes against hu­man­i­ty, that fa­cil­i­tat­ed a drug traf­fick­ing net­work.

Many of these peo­ple now have an is­sue with work­ing with the Unit­ed States in pur­suit of our na­tion­al and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty. Cu­ri­ous­ly, the dis­cus­sion that we are a soverign na­tion who re­serves the right to align our­selves with our best in­ter­ests is no longer seen as ap­pro­pri­ate when the align­ment is through the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion and with the Unit­ed States. Maybe it’s time to drop the herd men­tal­i­ty and ex­er­cise some crit­i­cal think­ing.

Ian Nar­ine is a fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant who prefers facts over farce. Please send your com­ments to ian@ian­nar­ine.com