Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, is en­cour­ag­ing vic­tims of ex­tor­tion to come for­ward, not­ing the of­fence is un­der-re­port­ed.

Dick­son’s en­cour­age­ment comes as Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal re­peat­ed his call for the po­lice to es­tab­lish a unit to specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress ex­tor­tion.

On Wednes­day, Mooni­lal is­sued a me­dia re­lease call­ing for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to set up an ex­tor­tion unit to pro­tect busi­ness­es. Mooni­lal first raised the is­sue last Oc­to­ber dur­ing the Bud­get de­bate. He said a mul­ti-di­vi­sion­al unit is re­quired to ad­dress the in­creas­ing fear of ex­tor­tion, where some busi­ness own­ers are ‘taxed’ around $30,000 month­ly by crim­i­nals.

Mooni­lal’s re­cent call to the po­lice came two days af­ter cen­tral busi­ness­man Kelvin Mo­hammed was killed be­cause he re­port­ed­ly re­fused to pay ex­tor­tion fees to crim­i­nals.

Mo­hammed, 41, the own­er of K-Chow Ice Cream Shop on Crown Trace, En­ter­prise, was shot dead while clos­ing his busi­ness at 8 pm on Tues­day.

Rel­a­tives said he was mur­dered for fail­ing to sub­mit to the de­mands of ex­tor­tion­ists.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Dick­son said ex­tor­tion of­ten goes un­der-re­port­ed be­cause vic­tims are usu­al­ly afraid to file a po­lice re­port. But he en­cour­aged them to come for­ward.

“I am aware that the or­gan­i­sa­tion is look­ing in­to the is­sue of ex­tor­tion and in most in­stances, ex­tor­tion is un­der-re­port­ed or not re­port­ed at all be­cause of fear and reper­cus­sions. That is why as an or­gan­i­sa­tion we will con­tin­ue to call on our cit­i­zen­ry who are vic­tims of ex­tor­tion, or any un­der-re­port­ed in­ci­dents, to re­port the in­ci­dent for the law and law en­force­ment of­fi­cers to take ef­fect and en­gage in the mat­ter,” Dick­son said.

Mooni­lal said what was need­ed was po­lice of­fi­cers who are trained specif­i­cal­ly to deal with the of­fence, where they can set up sting op­er­a­tions.

“The Gov­ern­ment should al­so amend the law to cre­ate a spe­cif­ic of­fence ti­tled ‘ex­tor­tion by gang mem­bers.’ The of­fence should car­ry a penal­ty of sig­nif­i­cant prison time. The law needs to be ur­gent­ly amend­ed to deal with this ur­gent and sig­nif­i­cant threat to our busi­ness sec­tor.”

Mooni­lal’s first call for a spe­cialised unit was echoed by Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers pres­i­dent Vivek Char­ran.

“What’s hap­pen­ing as well is that when busi­ness­men can’t pay, they (busi­ness­men) call fam­i­ly mem­bers and bor­row from this one and that one. It is be­com­ing a mess. I be­lieve it is an easy thing to crack down on, it is an easy thing to solve but the crim­i­nals, they have found an easy way to get mon­ey,” Char­ran said last year.

Last Sep­tem­ber, Mal­oney sub-con­trac­tor and res­i­dent Kevin Bark­er was killed out­side his home, af­ter he re­fused to fork out $20,000 to gang­sters who de­mand­ed a por­tion of his $90,000 re­fur­bish­ment con­tract.

In Oc­to­ber, a State con­trac­tor was told he need­ed to pay $30,000 to se­cure a job site by crim­i­nals who claimed they were be­ing nice by not ter­ror­is­ing his work­ers or steal­ing his equip­ment. The con­ver­sa­tion was record­ed and passed on to the po­lice, who are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter.

Cost of co­er­cion

Be­tween 2010 and 2018, the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) record­ed 43 in­ci­dents of sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions linked to ex­tor­tion, with 15 hav­ing a cash val­ue to­talling over $900,000.

The FIU’s 2017 and 2018 re­ports had dol­lar val­ues on sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions linked to ex­tor­tion—there were nine trans­ac­tions val­ued at $379,000 in 2017 and six in­stances amount­ing to $573,444 in 2018. In their an­nu­al re­ports from 2019, the FIU count­ed ex­tor­tion, to­geth­er with fraud and forgery of­fences.

In Sep­tem­ber last year, Ju­nior Prince, 52, and Ke­ston Look­nanan, 36, both from Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni, were charged with de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace. Po­lice al­leged that the men de­mand­ed mon­ey from a busi­ness­man who re­port­ed the mat­ter to po­lice.

Po­lice said some­time in Ju­ly 2023, a busi­ness own­er was co­erced in­to mak­ing a $100,000 pay­ment un­der threats of vi­o­lence and the de­struc­tion of the es­tab­lish­ment by fire. The busi­ness own­er re­port­ed­ly com­plied and paid a sum of mon­ey. How­ev­er, fur­ther de­mands for a re­cur­ring month­ly “pro­tec­tion tax” were sub­se­quent­ly made.