Shas­tri Boodan

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land has as­sured Ch­agua­nas busi­ness­men that ex­tor­tion will be dealt with.

In his ad­dress at a busi­ness mix­er host­ed by the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try he said, “One of my last acts in pri­vate prac­tice was to con­tact the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion in or­der for one of the po­lice to go with one of my clients, a busi­ness­man, so he is not ex­tort­ed by some­one whose job it is to ex­tort and I find that un­ac­cept­able.

“I want to give you all the as­sur­ance that I have di­rect con­tact with the DCPs. I am now ac­quaint­ing my­self with the job, but I want you all to have the as­sur­ance that when it comes to your busi­ness­es, your fam­i­lies, your homes, we will do all that is with­in our pow­er to make Ch­agua­nas a safe place.”

Scot­land said he wants to meet with the CCIC and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice with­in the next three weeks to de­vel­op a plan to make Ch­agua­nas safe which he hopes to im­ple­ment be­fore the start of the Christ­mas shop­ping sea­son.

CCIC Pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj said at least ten per cent of the group’s mem­bers have been ap­proached for ex­tor­tion mon­ey and even peo­ple who are not CCIC mem­bers have com­plained about ex­tor­tion.

Ma­haraj said he re­cent­ly tried to get in touch with a dou­bles ven­dor who was be­ing ex­tort­ed for $75,000 and had to flee the coun­try un­til he could come up with mon­ey to pay the ex­tor­tion­ist. He said some busi­ness­men have had to scale down op­er­a­tions to stay out of the lime­light.

The mix­er was al­so ad­dressed by se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Garvin Heer­ah, for­mer head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, who said the lat­est ex­tor­tion strat­e­gy is called “pass-a-five”

Heer­ah said in­di­vid­u­als and their fam­i­lies are mon­i­tored by crim­i­nals who send pho­tos to their vic­tims and de­mand that they pay $5,000 or risk be­ing harmed.

“Peo­ple are pay­ing that $5,000 as I speak. three, four, $5,000 be­ing paid through­out the month. Crim­i­nals are eat­ing a food for $5,000. Pass-a-five is ex­ist­ing as I speak, this is not made up,” he said.

“There is ev­i­dence and sta­tis­tics. You would not hear it as of­ten. I am here as the ex­pert to let you know the so­phis­ti­ca­tion of or­gan­ised crime in this coun­try.”

Heer­ah said busi­ness­men should do risk, threat and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty as­sess­ments to en­sure they sur­vive the dan­ger­ous times ahead. He said lo­cal busi­ness­men were al­so fac­ing the threat of ac­tive shoot­ers en­ter­ing their busi­ness­es and un­leash­ing au­to­mat­ic gun­fire and he ad­vised them to be pre­pared for all such sit­u­a­tions.