An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Il­le­gal gam­bling op­er­a­tions across the coun­try are cost­ing the Gov­ern­ment bil­lions an­nu­al­ly. Po­lice say these op­er­a­tions are al­so fu­elling gang vi­o­lence, hu­man traf­fick­ing and con­tra­band smug­gling.

Of­fi­cers from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) In­ves­ti­ga­tions and Op­er­a­tions Unit (IOU) de­scribed it as “an epi­dem­ic be­ing fu­elled by unchecked fund­ing,” where op­er­a­tors have ac­cess to large amounts of mon­ey not be­ing mon­i­tored, taxed, or con­trolled by au­thor­i­ties. This mon­ey al­lows them to ex­pand quick­ly, bribe of­fi­cials, and con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing de­spite laws.

A na­tion­wide po­lice crack­down on il­le­gal gam­ing has forced sev­er­al busi­ness­es to shut their doors over the past two months.

A joint op­er­a­tion along Char­lotte Street in Port-of-Spain last week saw six es­tab­lish­ments served with Gam­ing Tax No­tices amount­ing to $4,548,000 in un­paid tax­es, with op­er­a­tors in­struct­ed to shut down all gam­ing ma­chines un­til the out­stand­ing tax­es were paid.

Oth­er places with­in the cap­i­tal where these il­le­gal es­tab­lish­ments have been pop­ping up in­clude Hen­ry Street, Broad­way, and Up­per Fred­er­ick Street.

Mean­while, a pop­u­lar es­tab­lish­ment in the city was al­so served with a Gam­ing Tax No­tice for $2,200,000 in un­paid tax­es.

The unit al­so went to San­gre Grande re­cent­ly, where they seized gam­ing ma­chines from sev­er­al es­tab­lish­ments and shut down some op­er­a­tions.

Po­lice told Guardian Me­dia the op­er­a­tors are not on­ly evad­ing tax­es but al­so “em­ploy­ing un­savoury char­ac­ters in their es­tab­lish­ments and are al­so in­volved in the fi­nanc­ing of gangs.”

“The worst part about it is that they are start­ing to lit­er­al­ly bribe per­sons who would, on a nor­mal day, be re­ferred to as law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, to do all man­ner of il­le­gal things be­cause the mon­ey is unchecked.”

Of­fi­cers said even va­ri­ety store own­ers are now get­ting in­volved, with il­le­gal gam­ing hous­es ap­pear­ing in un­ex­pect­ed lo­ca­tions.

How op­er­a­tors cheat sys­tem

The of­fi­cers said these il­le­gal es­tab­lish­ments have learnt how to cheat the sys­tem.

“What they have start­ed do­ing now is to get a nor­mal or reg­u­lar bar li­cence, which, based on the Liquor Li­cence Act, al­lows them to have a cer­tain amount of games of amuse­ment on your premis­es.”

Of­fi­cers found some bars with 80 to 90 ma­chines in op­er­a­tion, far ex­ceed­ing the 20 al­lowed un­der the act. “This week (last week) alone, we would have vis­it­ed five places where the tax­es ex­ceed­ed $7 mil­lion. That is an in­di­ca­tion of what they have been get­ting away with. In Port-of-Spain, they have been get­ting bar li­cences and when you go in, they are ac­tu­al casi­nos.”

One of­fi­cer, hold­ing the de­vice be­ing used in these es­tab­lish­ments, which close­ly re­sem­bles a Linx ma­chine, ex­plained how it op­er­ates: “You can be stand­ing in the road, us­ing it. When some­one comes to play a mark, they punch it in and is­sue a re­ceipt like what you would get when you pay for an item.

“They then wait for the NL­CB mark to call, and us­ing that, they will pay be­tween $35 and $40 on every dol­lar, so eco­nom­i­cal­ly, it is vi­able for some­one who is gam­bling be­cause, of course, you are win­ning more, but it is il­le­gal at the end of the day.”

‘Sti­fling NL­CB agents’

Al­though in­di­cat­ing that the IOU was not about to “strong-arm” any­one, the of­fi­cer main­tained, “What has been go­ing on can­not con­tin­ue.”

Point­ing out that tax-free, unchecked mon­ey was go­ing in­to the op­er­a­tors’ pock­ets, the po­lice said, “It is very lu­cra­tive earn­ings that can be used to fi­nance any num­ber of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.”

They es­ti­mat­ed that some es­tab­lish­ments re­ceive up­wards of 200 cus­tomers per day, which was tan­ta­mount to them “sti­fling NL­CB agents.”

Point­ing out that the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) had been set up to ef­fec­tive­ly get rid of il­le­gal gam­bling, the of­fi­cers said, “The rev­enue earned through the NL­CB ac­tu­al­ly goes back in­to the cof­fers of the coun­try, but the per­sons op­er­at­ing these places are most­ly non-na­tion­als.

“From the time mon­ey comes in­to their es­tab­lish­ments, it is con­vert­ed in­to for­eign cur­ren­cy and fun­nelled out of the coun­try, so they are drain­ing the econ­o­my to the ex­tent where no in­vest­ments are be­ing re­alised or tax­es paid.”

The of­fi­cers de­clined to pro­vide an ap­prox­i­mate fig­ure in terms of lost rev­enue, but one of the of­fi­cers said, “Be­tween the ten places that we vis­it­ed in the last two weeks and were served tax no­tices, it was in ex­cess of $10 mil­lion. That is just ten out of more than 100 in Port-of-Spain alone.”

Asked what ev­i­dence they had that these il­le­gal gam­bling hous­es were di­rect­ly linked to the im­por­ta­tion of al­co­hol, cig­a­rettes, drugs and even hu­mans, po­lice said, “When we check across the board, we are re­al­is­ing that these same places where these il­le­gal ma­chines are com­ing from are the same places where the al­co­hol and cig­a­rettes are com­ing from.

“There are a cou­ple places we would have vis­it­ed, and we have in­for­ma­tion that there is pros­ti­tu­tion in­volv­ing Venezue­lan na­tion­als, so there is a clear link with the il­le­gal gam­ing in­dus­try and hu­man traf­fick­ing.”

‘Law en­force­ment in­volved’

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the in­volve­ment of State of­fi­cials in some of these il­le­gal es­tab­lish­ments, the po­lice re­vealed, “We al­so have in­for­ma­tion that there are a lot of po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved. So, in or­der to treat with these types of of­fences, se­nior of­fi­cers saw it fit to es­tab­lish the In­ves­ti­ga­tions and Op­er­a­tions Unit.”

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion Ray­mond Thom and As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of the North­west Di­vi­sion Sean Garvin Hen­ry hand-picked 10 of­fi­cers to form the IOU, which is led by ASP Dami­an Cadette.

The two-month-old unit care­ful­ly doc­u­ments every op­er­a­tion to avoid cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions.

“We en­sure that in every place we go to, we ad­vise the op­er­a­tors to have their at­tor­neys present, and in some in­stances, we al­so have the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Branch come in as well.

“We are go­ing out of our way to avoid al­le­ga­tions be­cause we know there are po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved, and we want to en­sure trans­paren­cy and al­so pro­tect the good name of the TTPS and our names as well.”

A se­nior of­fi­cer said the TTPS was “usu­al­ly the one that gets the blame when things go south, so this is why we have moved to en­sure there is no room for er­ror.”

18 ar­rest­ed, boat and rent­ed trucks seized

Re­fer­ring to the seizure of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars’ worth of il­le­gal al­co­hol and cig­a­rettes in Ch­aguara­mas last week–which they claimed was part of the spin-off from the il­lic­it gam­ing in­dus­try–the of­fi­cers in­sist­ed, “That is not just one per­son or one agency that could fa­cil­i­tate that. They have a large net­work and the fi­nanc­ing to do it. Just like a boat­load of il­le­gal al­co­hol could be brought in­to the coun­try, it will not be dif­fi­cult to bring in two hu­mans or firearms or drugs.”

A co­or­di­nat­ed in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion be­tween Tues­day and Wednes­day last week in Ch­aguara­mas re­sult­ed in the re­cov­ery of a ship­ment of al­co­hol and cig­a­rettes from Suri­name aboard the 73-foot ves­sel AIDAN, which docked at Point Cumana in Care­nage.

Of­fi­cers led by ASP Dami­an Cadette, ob­served sev­er­al men of­fload­ing box­es from the ves­sel. When po­lice iden­ti­fied them­selves and called for a sur­ren­der, the cap­tain and 17 men scat­tered, with some jump­ing in­to the sea.

Of­fi­cers were able to ap­pre­hend sev­er­al, in­clud­ing the 55-year-old cap­tain from Diego Mar­tin.

Dur­ing a walk-through of the ves­sel, Cadette and his team dis­cov­ered a large quan­ti­ty of con­tra­band al­co­hol and cig­a­rettes. Four de­liv­ery trucks parked near­by were al­so seized.

An in­ven­to­ry con­firmed 1,000 cas­es of Ab­solute Vod­ka, 200 cas­es of Hen­nessy, 200 cas­es of John­ny Walk­er Black, and 1,000 cas­es of At­lanta cig­a­rettes on board. The men, in­clud­ing sev­er­al Venezue­lan na­tion­als, were ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the of­fence of the il­le­gal im­por­ta­tion of con­tra­band items un­der the Cus­toms Act.

Law en­force­ment said these op­er­a­tions not on­ly de­prive the Gov­ern­ment of rev­enue but al­so put com­mu­ni­ties at risk from crime and ex­ploita­tion.