A top-se­cret Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty doc­u­ment which iden­ti­fied sev­er­al of the men ar­rest­ed dur­ing last week’s an­ti-gang sweep shows the same men ben­e­fit­ing from lu­cra­tive Gov­ern­ment con­tracts.

The doc­u­ment traces the men’s af­fil­i­a­tions to com­pa­nies which re­ceived mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar State con­tracts over the past 14 years.

This in­for­ma­tion is con­tained in a 17-page re­port com­piled by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith back in 2014 when he served as min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Grif­fith yes­ter­day con­firmed the au­then­tic­i­ty of the re­port and said he warned the gov­ern­ment back then that the fight for State con­tracts could lead to in­creased gang war­fare.

“I can con­firm the doc­u­ment. It is not a se­cret that I com­piled that re­port back when I was Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter,” he said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

“It has been a prob­lem for the past 14 years where gangs fight to get their claws in­to State con­tracts which is the cat­a­lyst for gang wars and in­creased homi­cide.”

“As Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, that in­for­ma­tion has come to my at­ten­tion that the ac­tions have con­tin­ued and that they are now us­ing oth­er names to get the con­tracts and they are the silent prof­i­teers,” he said.

Grif­fith said as CoP it is not up to him to di­rect how the State man­aged its re­sources but Gov­ern­ment need­ed to be “very care­ful” about gangs ac­quir­ing State con­tracts and then us­ing the mon­ey and prof­its for il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties.

Gangs ob­tained mil­lion dol­lar con­tracts through the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) and Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP), ac­cord­ing to the re­port, Ac­qui­si­tion of Gov­ern­ment con­tracts by Known Gang Mem­bers.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) Cab­i­net of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was pro­vid­ed with the doc­u­ment and warned that the fight for gov­ern­ment con­tracts would lead to in­creased gang war­fare.

“Crim­i­nal gang lead­ers op­er­at­ing along the East-West Cor­ri­dor con­tin­ue to use their in­flu­ence to ob­tain lu­cra­tive con­tracts from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), as well as un­der the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme, the Com­mu­ni­ty En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Project (Cepep)and the Life­S­port Pro­gramme,” the doc­u­ment stat­ed.

“In­come gar­nered from these con­tracts is then used to fund il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties such as the pur­chase of il­le­gal firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and nar­cotics.”

The doc­u­ment al­so states that “con­tracts are al­so used as a method of en­sur­ing com­mu­ni­ty sup­port through the pro­vi­sion of jobs to res­i­dents.”

“The gangs have be­come in­creas­ing­ly re­liant on these con­tracts over the years and ri­val each oth­er vi­o­lent­ly to ob­tain and re­tain them,” the doc­u­ment said.

The list­ing shows con­tracts ob­tained by An­tho­ny “Boom­bay” Boney, Cedric “Burkie” Burke, An­cil “Chemist” Vil­lafana and Ken­neth “Span­ish” Ro­driguez, all of whom were ar­rest­ed last week.

Boney, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, be­longed to the Africa gang op­er­at­ing out of John John, Port of Spain. He ob­tained sev­en con­tracts, in­clud­ing main­te­nance con­tracts from CEPEP and was al­so award­ed the mil­lion dol­lar con­tract for con­struc­tion of the pavil­ion and up­grad­ing of a com­mu­ni­ty park and in­stal­la­tion of a bas­ket­ball court at Point Plai­sance Park, Laven­tille, un­der the East Port of Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd.

Boney al­so got State con­tracts to re­fur­bish the bas­ket­ball court at Prince Street, Port of Spain, and to con­struct a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre on George Street, Port of Spain.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, the main con­trac­tor of the pavil­ion at Point Plai­sance Park, Laven­tille, start­ed the work in March 2012 and “aban­doned in June 2012 due to threats to the ini­tial con­trac­tor”.

Burke’s name ap­pears next to ten Gov­ern­ment con­tracts, in­clud­ing main­te­nance con­tracts from CEPEP, box drain con­struc­tion and re­fur­bish­ment of the Diego Mar­tin EC­CL Cen­tre from the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self-Help.

He al­so re­ceived con­tracts from the East Port of Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and URP.

One of the per­sons list­ed on the con­tract worked close­ly with Ro­driguez was al­so con­tract­ed to pro­vide ICT sur­veil­lance ac­cess con­trol to the Dun­can Street Po­lice Post. The man was re­tained by the HDC to do “re­me­di­al works” at its St Agus­tine project at Fi­delis Heights and to do “main­te­nance work” at Li­ons Gate, En­ter­prise.

Ro­driguez was linked to the con­struc­tion firm RI­CO De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and was hired through a sec­ond com­pa­ny as an “in­fra­struc­ture su­per­vi­sor” to build the po­lice post on Dun­can Street.

The same com­pa­ny lists An­cil “Chemist” Vil­lafana as a di­rec­tor and was al­so re­tained to do work on “re­con­struct­ing two (2) storey, eight (8) apart­ment build­ings at Phase 4 Beetham Gar­dens”.

The con­tract was of­fi­cial­ly award­ed to an­oth­er com­pa­ny but RI­CO was re­tained as a sub-con­trac­tor.

Ro­driguez was de­tained in the po­lice ex­er­cise sev­er­al days ago and re­leased yes­ter­day.

Men linked to the Cas­sa­va Piece gang, which is a sub­set of the Beetham Al­liance/Ras­ta City gang, have been linked to the HDC con­tract to re­fur­bish win­dows at the Harpe Plan­nings and is list­ed as a CEPEP con­trac­tor.

An­oth­er mem­ber of the same unit, Jonathan “Tal­lo” Moore, ten­dered for two agri­cul­tur­al con­tracts which in­clud­ed the rental of heavy equip­ment. He re­ceived ap­proval for three projects on Basilon Street, Port of Spain, “but the projects were on hold for un­known rea­sons.” He was al­so re­tained for work on the Man­go Rose project but that job “was halt­ed for un­known rea­sons”.

Back in 2013, Moore won a case against the State for $165,000 af­ter he was re­port­ed­ly beat­en with a ham­mer dur­ing a po­lice raid at his home which he claimed left him with per­ma­nent in­ju­ries. Moore, of Bath Street, East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain, filed the law­suit for un­law­ful ar­rest, as­sault and false im­pris­on­ment af­ter the De­cem­ber 17, 2009, in­ci­dent.

Moore, the son of po­lice in­spec­tor Daniel Moore, said then that he was ar­rest­ed by po­lice al­most 14 times be­tween 2007 and 2010.

Ra­jaae Ali, who is cur­rent­ly be­ing tried for the mur­der of at­tor­ney Dana See­ta­hal, is al­so on the list.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed cur­rent Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young for com­ment via What­sApp but though he read the mes­sages, he did not re­spond.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the is­sue, for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said he was not sure there was a re­port on the is­sue but said he knew that then min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty Grif­fith had a “deep con­cern with an al­leged link be­tween state con­tracts and crim­i­nal el­e­ments ben­e­fit­ing from same.”.

“He raised the mat­ter with me and we were col­lab­o­rat­ing to deal with the mat­ter with­in the con­fines of the law,” Mooni­lal said