An­na-Lisa Paul

The Mul­ti-Agency Task Force (MATF) has shut down at least sev­en li­censed premis­es in Ch­agua­nas, San Fer­nan­do, Freeport and Port-of-Spain be­tween 2018 and 2022, which were re­port­ed­ly be­ing op­er­at­ed as broth­els and il­le­gal gam­bling halls un­der the fa­cade of a restau­rant or ho­tel.

Shar­ing just how his unit had for­mu­lat­ed a plan to go af­ter un­scrupu­lous busi­ness own­ers/op­er­a­tors, ASP Leon Haynes, who heads the MATF, yes­ter­day said the mul­ti-agency ini­tia­tive had pro­vid­ed pos­i­tive re­sults.

Speak­ing at the week­ly TTPS me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, he said state agen­cies who had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure com­pli­ance with the law had been work­ing to­geth­er.

These agen­cies in­clud­ed the Fire Ser­vice, the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, TTPS, the Health In­spec­torate, OS­HA, the Elec­tri­cal In­spec­torate and the Bu­reau of Stan­dards.

He ex­plained, “The idea was to work to­geth­er, let’s vis­it these premis­es to­geth­er, let’s treat with some of the breach­es that were oc­cur­ring as re­gards to the li­censed premis­es not op­er­at­ing in ac­cor­dance with their li­cence.”

Haynes said dur­ing their in­spec­tion of some lo­ca­tions, which were known to be used for pros­ti­tu­tion, they de­cid­ed to look clos­er at the safe­ty fac­tors of these premis­es as one way of shut­ting them down.

“Most of the time, these broth­els or ho­tels were nev­er struc­tured or de­signed to op­er­ate in the man­ner in which they are now op­er­at­ing. It was nev­er de­signed...some restau­rants start­ed to have rooms and start­ed to do oth­er things. These build­ings were nev­er so de­signed and when the OS­HA and Elec­tri­cal In­spec­torate and the oth­er agen­cies vis­it these places, we had iden­ti­fied so many se­ri­ous breach­es in terms of safe­ty, that on most oc­ca­sions, OS­HA was able to is­sue pro­hi­bi­tion or­ders.

“In oth­er words, the safe­ty breach­es were so se­ri­ous that they closed these places im­me­di­ate­ly,” Haynes said.

Recog­nis­ing that cer­tain types of ac­tiv­i­ties were oc­cur­ring at some of these places, he said, “We may not be able to treat with the ac­tiv­i­ty, if we analyse and we find oth­er so­lu­tions...if your premis­es are not safe, if we are able to close your premis­es, we are able to stop the ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Asked why po­lice could not tar­get the pros­ti­tu­tion tak­ing place at some of these premis­es, Haynes ex­plained, “For years, po­lice have been go­ing to these places and try­ing to prove pros­ti­tu­tion and try­ing to deem these places broth­els, but pros­ti­tu­tion is not so easy to prove how it oc­curs. Pros­ti­tu­tion is de­fined as the ex­change of mon­ey for sex­u­al acts, and most of the times, these ex­changes don’t hap­pen be­tween the two par­ties...they pay the bar. There is a whole set of road­blocks to pre­vent that type of in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Vow­ing to con­tin­ue try­ing to shut down such op­er­a­tions, he said MATF had been ex­plor­ing oth­er av­enues to achieve this ob­jec­tive.

Asked about whether cor­rupt po­lice of­fi­cers were stymieing some of their op­er­a­tions to shut down broth­els, he ad­mit­ted they know there are of­fi­cers in­volved in the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Mean­while, re­gard­ing shad­ow Play Whe op­er­a­tions, he said the MATF was work­ing close­ly with the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB), as they con­tin­ued to lose mil­lions to il­le­gal op­er­a­tors.

Five per­sons have been ar­rest­ed for the of­fence so far across the coun­try, and Haynes said their long-term aim was to treat with the wider is­sue un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act. He al­so promised to in­crease and ex­pand op­er­a­tions in the year ahead, with greater fo­cus on the is­sue of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, as well as on cor­rupt state of­fi­cers who are com­plic­it.

He said the MATF had in­ves­ti­gat­ed over 120 com­plaints in re­la­tion to il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and 27 op­er­a­tions were con­duct­ed, re­sult­ing in the seizure of eight ex­ca­va­tors, one bull­doz­er and 13 trucks. A to­tal of 18 per­sons were al­so de­tained, of which 11 were charged.

The MATF, which was es­tab­lished in 2018, pri­mar­i­ly ad­dress­es il­lic­it trade; pros­ti­tu­tion; gam­bling; and il­le­gal quar­ry­ing—and works along­side oth­er agen­cies un­der the am­bit of the Min­istries of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Trade and In­dus­try, Agri­cul­ture, and Health.