De­spite the es­tab­lish­ment of an Ex­tor­tion Unit with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj says busi­ness­peo­ple in cen­tral Trinidad are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly fear­ful of re­port­ing ex­tor­tion to po­lice, with many avoid­ing not on­ly Di­vali fes­tiv­i­ties but all so­cial en­gage­ments.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the eve of Di­vali, Ma­haraj re­vealed that the re­cent crime surge has led many busi­ness­peo­ple to stay un­der the radar.

“They are tar­get­ed for ex­tor­tion,” Ma­haraj said.

“This is noth­ing new; it has been hap­pen­ing for sev­er­al years, but over the last year, there has been an in­crease in ex­tor­tion by crim­i­nal el­e­ments.”

Ma­haraj said some busi­ness own­ers are of­ten tar­get­ed be­cause of their vis­i­ble suc­cess, and crim­i­nals view them as like­ly to have the fi­nan­cial means to pay.

Asked whether the crim­i­nals had a net­work in banks and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions, Ma­haraj said he was un­sure of any po­ten­tial net­works in­volved in the ex­tor­tion op­er­a­tions.

“I would be­lieve it’s en­vi­ron­men­tal scan­ning, though I can’t con­firm net­works with bank work­ers,” he said. “All those busi­ness­men who were tar­get­ed are up­front in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Asked how the ex­tor­tion­ists op­er­ate, Ma­haraj said, “The crim­i­nals would call busi­ness­peo­ple and say they know where your chil­dren are or where your spouse works. They would ask for mon­ey to be trans­ferred.”

For many, he said, these threats are enough to prompt quick pay­ments.

Ma­haraj added, “Peo­ple pay the mon­ey to avoid harm to their fam­i­lies.”

He al­so not­ed that de­spite the es­tab­lish­ment of the TTPS Ex­tor­tion Unit, many busi­ness own­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are fam­i­ly-run, are fear­ful about go­ing to the po­lice.

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber vice pres­i­dent Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon al­so told Guardian Me­dia that while the or­gan­is­ers of the Di­vali Na­gar must be com­mend­ed for the high stan­dard of se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to en­sure the safe­ty of pa­trons, many busi­ness own­ers have been forced to hire pri­vate trans­port to en­sure the safe­ty of em­ploy­ees at night when they close up.

Say­ing there is great ap­pre­hen­sion among the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, Ar­joon said he was pleased about the high­er po­lice pres­ence at the Na­gar this year. How­ev­er, he not­ed that some busi­ness­es had in­ten­tions of rent­ing booths but be­came vic­tims of ex­tor­tion.

“Some of them had premis­es bro­ken in­to, and be­cause they had to spend mon­ey to for­ti­fy their premis­es, cou­pled with the fear of ex­tor­tion, they opt­ed not to par­tic­i­pate in these events,” Ar­joon said.

Sales for lo­cal ven­dors were not en­cour­ag­ing this year be­cause of the cli­mate of fear, which de­ters busi­ness in­vest­ment lo­cal­ly, he said.

“It dis­cour­ages new busi­ness own­ers from set­ting up op­er­a­tions; in fact, many en­tre­pre­neurs have start­ed to scale down op­er­a­tions and have sent their chil­dren abroad with in­ten­tions to mi­grate them­selves.”

Ear­li­er this week, Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed not­ed sim­i­lar fears among busi­ness peo­ple as Di­vali ap­proached, stat­ing that many lo­cal spon­sors for this year’s cel­e­bra­tions with­drew.

“Be­cause of the state of the crime with­in the coun­try and many busi­ness­es, es­pe­cial­ly cen­tral busi­ness­men, are be­ing faced with ex­tor­tion right now,” Mo­hammed ex­plained.

“Busi­ness­men are be­ing very scep­ti­cal, safe­guard­ing them­selves and kind of try­ing to stay in­doors.”

Fe­lic­i­ty coun­cil­lor Sun­dar Jookoo agreed, re­port­ing that on­ly around 30 per cent of busi­ness­es con­tributed to the cel­e­bra­tions this year.

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Richard Smith, head of the Ex­tor­tion Task Force, con­firmed this week that his unit had re­ceived 28 ex­tor­tion re­ports to date. He urged vic­tims to come for­ward and make re­ports.