Geisha Kow­lessar

The Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Jus­tice yes­ter­day is­sued a diplo­mat­ic note to T&T's For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry for pro­vi­sion­al war­rants to be is­sued for three sus­pects de­scribed as "busi­ness­men."This came as in­ves­ti­ga­tors, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the US Drug En­force­ment Agency (DEA), con­tin­ued their probe in­to the seizure in Vir­ginia of an es­ti­mat­ed $644 mil­lion worth of high-grade co­caine con­cealed in fruit juice cans orig­i­nat­ing from T&T.The drug was seized by US Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion of­fi­cers at the port of Nor­folk, Vir­ginia, on De­cem­ber 20. The ship­ment was smug­gled in over 700 cans of Trinidad juices, man­u­fac­tured by the Cit­rus Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, a sub­sidiary of SM Jaleel.Sources said up to late yes­ter­day the note was still at the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry but it was to be for­ward­ed to the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty which falls un­der the min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.They said even be­fore the note was dis­patched from the US Gov­ern­ment, it had alert­ed T&T au­thor­i­ties about the war­rants.

For­mer head of the au­thor­i­ty, at­tor­ney David West, yes­ter­day said the is­su­ing of pro­vi­sion­al war­rants was done from one cen­tral au­thor­i­ty to an­oth­er but the process could al­so be done through the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry.He ex­plained: "If you want to err on the side of cau­tion and to go through all the chan­nels, the pro­vi­sion­al war­rant can be sent to the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry, then to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice and then to the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty and from there trans­ferred to of­fi­cers to make the nec­es­sary ar­rest. "It could al­so be done di­rect­ly from one au­thor­i­ty to the oth­er.

"How­ev­er, I would not read in­to it go­ing to the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry as op­posed to di­rect­ly from au­thor­i­ty to au­thor­i­ty be­cause it re­al­ly does not mat­ter ei­ther way."He said once the process had been com­plet­ed, an ar­rest was im­me­di­ate, adding: "There is no de­lay or there should not be any de­lay of any sort be­cause this is treat­ed as a mat­ter of ur­gency."The diplo­mat­ic note, West added, must con­tain de­tails of the sus­pects, in­clud­ing their names, ad­dress­es and dates of birth."The diplo­mat­ic note would ba­si­cal­ly read 'the US Gov­ern­ment here­by re­quests the pro­vi­sion­al war­rant with a view to ex­tra­di­tion of ... (names of sus­pects).'"

De­funct com­pa­ny re­vived

Doc­u­men­ta­tion on Caribbean Sea Works Ltd shows that even af­ter the com­pa­ny be­came de­funct when its own­er John Michael O'Sul­li­van died in 2008 it re­mained in op­er­a­tion as cer­tifi­cates of con­tin­u­ance were re­peat­ed­ly ap­plied for at the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry De­part­ment of the Le­gal Af­fairs Min­istry.The com­pa­ny's name was then al­leged­ly used in a trans-na­tion­al drug-smug­gling op­er­a­tion.The T&T Gazette said O'Sul­li­van died on Oc­to­ber 28, 2008 and his will was pro­bat­ed on Jan­u­ary 5, 2009. His wife, Brigit­ta, was named as the sole ex­ecutrix of the will.Doc­u­ments ob­tained by the T&T Guardian from the reg­istry and dat­ed De­cem­ber 13, 2012 show the com­pa­ny's reg­is­tra­tion num­ber was C-1419 (C). They al­so named Doolin Ra­goonath Ma­habir as the on­ly "au­tho­rised of­fi­cer" of the com­pa­ny.The doc­u­ment al­so named Mal­colm Browne, of 128, Mil­ford Road, Scar­bor­ough, and Brigit­ta O'Sul­li­van, of 107, Windy Ridge, Good­wood Park, Glen­coe, as the di­rec­tors.

But a for­mer com­pa­ny em­ploy­ee said Browne al­so died and soon af­ter her hus­band's death Brigit­ta re­turned to Ger­many as she had no in­ter­est in run­ning the com­pa­ny.The doc­u­ment bore on­ly the sig­na­ture of Ra­goonath-Ma­habir. It list­ed the oc­cu­pa­tion of Brigit­ta as "pro­pri­etress", while there was none for Browne.At­tempts, via TSTT's di­rec­to­ry en­quiries, to get a phone num­ber for Ra­goonath-Ma­habir were un­suc­cess­ful as the num­ber was blocked. In re­ply to a re­quest for an ad­dress, the T&T Guardian was told the ad­dress al­so was blocked.No­tices of change of sec­re­tary showed a year be­fore O'Sul­li­van died, Browne was ap­point­ed com­pa­ny sec­re­tary on Ju­ly 26, 2007.The no­tice said Vic­tor Jat­tan, of 53, Lyn­don Street, Curepe, whose oc­cu­pa­tion was list­ed as pro­pri­etor, ceased to be the sec­re­tary just be­fore O'Sul­li­van died.

Where is Vic­tor Jat­tan?

The name Vic­tor Jat­tan ap­peared through­out the doc­u­ments. He was named as the com­pa­ny sec­re­tary and his ad­dress was giv­en as 53 Lyn­don Street, Curepe.When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the ad­dress yes­ter­day, it was a ground-floor apart­ment. No one an­swered de­spite sev­er­al calls.Neigh­bours de­scribed Jat­tan as "al­ways keep­ing to him­self and hard­ly in­ter­act­ing with any­one."

They con­firmed he worked at Caribbean Sea Works Ltd.Ma­rine equip­ment, they added, was out­side the apart­ment, in­clud­ing two boat fend­er guards.They said Jat­tan had not been seen in a long time and they had been told he was in Mi­a­mi at one point.In 1995, for­mer House Speak­er Oc­c­ah Seep­aul ac­cused Jat­tan of de­fraud­ing her of $17,000.

Ex­tra­di­tion from T&T

Un­der the Ex­tra­di­tion Act, T&T may ex­tra­dite a fugi­tive to a re­quest­ing coun­try if it is a Com­mon­wealth ter­ri­to­ry, or a treaty has been con­clud­ed and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has de­clared that the act ap­plies to that coun­try. T&T is par­ty to a bi­lat­er­al ex­tra­di­tion treaty with the US. Re­quests for ex­tra­di­tion of a fugi­tive must be re­ceived through the diplo­mat­ic chan­nel. Re­quests for the pro­vi­sion­al ar­rest (in ur­gent cas­es) may be re­ceived through diplo­mat­ic chan­nels, In­ter­pol or a pre­scribed chan­nel.Once re­ceived by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, these re­quests and their sup­port­ing doc­u­ments are ex­am­ined by coun­sel in the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty to en­sure they are com­plete and con­form with the act and, if ap­plic­a­ble, the rel­e­vant treaty.The doc­u­men­ta­tion is then sent to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), who will rep­re­sent the re­quest­ing coun­try in the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings. This in­cludes ob­tain­ing the ar­rest war­rant from a mag­is­trate and tak­ing part in the ex­tra­di­tion hear­ing.At the ex­tra­di­tion hear­ing, the mag­is­trate must be sat­is­fied that the ev­i­dence shows con­duct that amounts to an ex­tra­ditable of­fence and would war­rant a tri­al if the of­fence had been com­mit­ted in T&T.If so, and if com­mit­tal is not pro­hib­it­ed by the Ex­tra­di­tion Act, the mag­is­trate will com­mit the fugi­tive to cus­tody to await a war­rant is­sued by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for his re­turn.The act gives the AG the au­thor­i­ty to or­der the re­turn of the fugi­tive to the ter­ri­to­ry seek­ing the ex­tra­di­tion.