An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra has been ac­cused of plot­ting to as­sas­si­nate a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, which led to his ar­rest on a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) on Wednes­day.

Al­though the PDO signed by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der on No­vem­ber 19 was not gazetted up to yes­ter­day, it al­leged that the 50-year-old of North Oropouche Road in San­gre Grande posed a clear and present threat to pub­lic safe­ty.

The pro­pri­etor of DG Homes, a re­al es­tate com­pa­ny with hous­ing de­vel­op­ments in sev­er­al parts of the coun­try, was tak­en to the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa fol­low­ing his ar­rest by of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) on No­vem­ber 20.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that Guer­ra’s son was al­so held un­der a PDO and that he, too, had been tak­en to the ECRC.

Guer­ra’s PDO read, “The de­tainee, Dan­ny Guer­ra, is the leader of an Or­gan­ised Crime Group (‘OCG), with­in the le­gal de­f­i­n­i­tion of the An­ti-Gang Act 2021. The OCG is in­volved in the traf­fick­ing of il­le­gal arms, mon­ey laun­der­ing and il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.”

The or­der claimed that Guer­ra, “...and oth­ers in­tend to im­mi­nent­ly ex­e­cute the as­sas­si­na­tion of a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter and to es­ca­late at­tacks against ri­val gangs in pub­lic spaces us­ing high-pow­ered firearms. The de­ten­tion of this in­di­vid­ual is there­fore nec­es­sary to dis­rupt the group’s op­er­a­tional plan­ning and to pre­vent fur­ther acts of vi­o­lence that pose a clear and present threat to pub­lic safe­ty.”

The de­ten­tion or­der did not re­veal the Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter whose life was un­der threat. In Au­gust this year, news broke that threats were made against the lives of three min­is­ters—Wayne Sturge, Khadi­jah Ameen and Bar­ry Padarath.

Sturge, it was claimed, re­fused de­mands to en­sure cer­tain peo­ple were em­ployed by the State and at his To­co/San­gre Grande con­stituen­cy of­fice. This re­fusal al­leged­ly led to threats to his life.

Mean­while, Guer­ra, the man­ag­er of D Guer­ra Ltd, al­so owns sev­er­al oth­er com­pa­nies un­der the D Guer­ra Group of Com­pa­nies.

Guer­ra, along with his son, Garvin Guer­ra, 28, and 16 oth­ers, were de­tained af­ter a ma­jor po­lice op­er­a­tion on Oc­to­ber 9, which re­sult­ed in the shut­ting down of an il­le­gal quar­ry site at Manuel Con­go in Gua­napo, and led to the seizure of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar pro­cess­ing plant, trucks and oth­er heavy ma­chin­ery.

Guer­ra, who re­port­ed­ly played a role in the gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign to se­cure the To­co/San­gre Grande con­stituen­cy for the rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), was charged with un­law­ful pro­cess­ing of ag­gre­gate with­out a li­cence from the Min­istry of En­er­gy, and had been re­leased on $50,000 bail.

Re­leas­ing a state­ment yes­ter­day in which he ad­dressed the is­sues of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and min­er­al pro­cess­ing, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has been in­ves­ti­gat­ing such com­plaints for sev­er­al years.

Gue­var­ro said be­tween 2020 and 2025, a to­tal of 47 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and charged for of­fences re­lat­ing to il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and min­er­al pro­cess­ing with­out a li­cence is­sued by the Di­rec­tor of Min­er­als or the State Land Com­mis­sion­er, in ar­eas such as Waller­field, San­gre Grande, Manuel Con­go Ari­ma, Matu­ra and Ve­ga De Oropouche.