Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices have seized ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion worth of il­le­gal drugs since the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) came in­to of­fice last year.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the state­ment in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing two ma­jor drug busts in Sep­tem­ber, with a com­bined es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of near­ly $400 mil­lion.

The first seizure took place at a ware­house on Pokhor Road, Long­denville, where po­lice and Cus­toms of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly dis­cov­ered 420 pack­ages of co­caine weigh­ing about 416.5 kilo­grammes. The drugs were es­ti­mat­ed to have a street val­ue of $193.5 mil­lion.

In a sep­a­rate op­er­a­tion, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard in­ter­cept­ed a pirogue near Huevos Is­land on Mon­day, re­cov­er­ing 394 pack­ages of co­caine weigh­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 440.2 kilo­grammes. The es­ti­mat­ed re­tail street val­ue was more than $204.5 mil­lion.

Asked about the in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the Prime Min­is­ter said she could not com­ment on their pos­si­ble out­comes, but ex­pressed con­fi­dence in lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment.

“I can’t speak to what will hap­pen with the in­ves­ti­ga­tions, but I’m sure the po­lice and in­ter­na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties will do a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­leged that ma­jor traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tions in­volve wealthy busi­ness in­ter­ests and lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

“Trinidad is a small place. Every­one knows it’s wealthy so-called busi­ness peo­ple who are be­hind drug traf­fick­ing. No poor per­son or small op­er­a­tor can traf­fick a bil­lion dol­lars worth of drugs,” she said.

She fur­ther claimed that large busi­ness­es were be­ing as­sist­ed by peo­ple with­in lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, ar­gu­ing that the scale of the al­leged ac­tiv­i­ty points to net­works be­yond small-scale op­er­a­tors.

“We know that big busi­ness­es are in­volved and they are aid­ed by per­sons in lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. The car­tels don’t take TT dol­lars, they take US dol­lars,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

She added that lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment agen­cies have a num­ber of lo­cal busi­ness­es “on their radar.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that cit­i­zens may not see ar­rests pub­licly, she said ac­tion was be­ing tak­en be­hind the scenes to dis­rupt the in­ter­na­tion­al move­ment of drugs and the busi­ness op­er­a­tions of those al­leged­ly in­volved.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so point­ed to visa re­vo­ca­tions, re­stric­tions and re­jec­tions by the Unit­ed States and Unit­ed King­dom over the past year and a half, say­ing she ex­pect­ed con­tin­ued in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port.

De­spite the re­port­ed seizures, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­knowl­edged that drug ship­ments may still evade de­tec­tion.

“There is al­ways room for im­prove­ment, and I do ex­pect some ship­ments will sneak through, but the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices are mak­ing good progress,” she said.

Figueira warns of new crim­i­nal con­flict over drug routes

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira is warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go could be on the verge of an­oth­er dead­ly crim­i­nal con­flict, as a se­ries of ma­jor drug seizures point to a pos­si­ble shift in co­caine traf­fick­ing routes to­wards Eu­rope.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Figueira said old traf­fick­ing routes through Trinidad and To­ba­go, which once con­nect­ed the re­gion to Eu­rope, are now be­ing re­ac­ti­vat­ed.

He said Colom­bian traf­fick­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions are in­creas­ing­ly look­ing to­wards Eu­rope as a mar­ket for co­caine, amid what he de­scribed as a col­lapse in de­mand in the Unit­ed States.

Figueira fur­ther claimed that ri­val transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go are com­pet­ing over ac­cess to the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket.

He warned that this com­pe­ti­tion could even­tu­al­ly trig­ger an­oth­er vi­o­lent con­flict.

Figueira is al­so crit­i­cal of the coun­try’s broad­er ap­proach to or­gan­ised crime, ar­gu­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go has failed to suf­fi­cient­ly trans­form its na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus to con­front the in­ter­na­tion­al na­ture of the threat.

He al­so ques­tioned whether Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion would be enough to tack­le the prob­lem, point­ing to Ja­maica as an ex­am­ple where sim­i­lar mea­sures did not, in his as­sess­ment, end a con­flict be­tween ri­val crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions.