Extortion threatens business survival

Raphael John-Lall

The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), which rep­re­sents the re­tail sec­tor in T&T in a state­ment to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, said it views the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion in T&T with great con­cern.

“It is the view of the CR­BC that crime is not on­ly af­fects eco­nom­ic pro­duc­tiv­i­ty when vic­tims miss work, but com­mu­ni­ties al­so are af­fect­ed through loss of tourism in­vest­ments and re­tail sales. Even the so-called vic­tim­less crimes of hu­man traf­fick­ing, drug abuse, and gam­bling have ma­jor so­cial con­se­quences.”

The state­ment al­so said in ad­di­tion to this, run­away crime has a neg­a­tive im­pact on busi­ness in­vest­ment and gov­ern­ment spend­ing re­gard­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al works.

“This is due to the emerg­ing crime of ex­tor­tion, which is rear­ing its ug­ly head and is very alarm­ing. The po­lice ser­vice needs to be more flex­i­ble and ad­just their struc­ture to set up a unit to deal with the ex­tor­tion rack­et and pro­tect small busi­ness­es and le­git­i­mate con­trac­tors.”

The state­ment added: “Chron­ic is­sues with crime can lead to the clo­sure of busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly small busi­ness­es that lack the re­sources to re­cov­er. This is a re­al sit­u­a­tion, as many fam­i­lies who are in­volved in busi­ness are clos­ing their en­ter­pris­es and mi­grat­ing to the Unit­ed States and Cana­da. There is a huge loss in con­fi­dence and a high lev­el of dis­pro­por­tion­ate fear among these fam­i­lies.”

In the state­ment, the CR­BC called for more Po­lice/Army joint pa­trols with­in all dis­tricts with­in T&T and stat­ed that cit­i­zens now con­sid­er all of T&T to be “hot spots.”

“It is on­ly in re­cent press re­ports that high­light­ed the town of Ari­ma be­ing plagued by gang vi­o­lence and busi­ness­es are shut­ting down and even res­i­dents are mov­ing out of the area. This is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Min­is­ter Kei­th Scot­land to be strate­gic and ap­ply both the hard and soft pow­er to bring sus­tained sta­bil­i­ty with­in the hot spots with­in Ari­ma.”

The state­ment end­ed by say­ing that there is a “fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty” for Scot­land to hold mean­ing­ful and con­struc­tive di­a­logue with the many dif­fer­ent busi­ness cham­bers and as­so­ci­a­tions to un­der­stand their chal­lenges and ex­change views on some prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions.

Busi­ness ‘fronts’ tar­get­ed

Busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T con­tin­ues to be neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed, as the mil­lion-dol­lar il­le­gal firearm trade and mur­der rate are in­creas­ing un­abat­ed­ly.

A re­search pa­per com­plet­ed in May of this year by au­thor and crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira analysed crime sta­tis­tics which show the im­pact of ris­ing transna­tion­al crime on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

It al­so high­lights the wor­ry­ing trend of the emer­gence of new il­lic­it in­dus­tries in T&T.

The re­search pa­per is en­ti­tled “An analy­sis of kill events with two or more vic­tims in T&T 2017- 2023.”

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Figueira gave more de­tails.

“The war be­tween two con­tend­ing busi­ness mod­els in the il­lic­it trades have changed the na­ture of the il­lic­it trades in T&T, changed crim­i­nal­i­ty, fur­ther im­pact­ed the costs of do­ing busi­ness send­ing it high­er in a pe­ri­od when the lev­el of de­mand has tak­en a hit. There is now a re­sort to at­tacks against the per­son and prop­er­ty where busi­ness­es and their own­ers/op­er­a­tors are tar­get­ed. The wars in the il­lic­it trades and the new or­der of the il­lic­it trades have now lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for those seek­ing em­ploy­ment,” he said.

He al­so re­ferred to fig­ures in the un­der­world who are hurt­ing the im­age of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty by us­ing le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es as a front for their il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“De­mand ex­ceeds the sup­ply of op­por­tu­ni­ty. The dis­placed are now em­brac­ing at­tacks on the per­son and prop­er­ty. Per­sons in­volved in the il­lic­it trades who run front busi­ness are tar­gets in the war be­tween il­lic­it busi­ness mod­els, which is act­ing as blood on the wa­ter for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.”

“The mur­der toll for 2024 to-date sig­nals the like­li­hood that we will, in 2024, sur­pass the mur­der toll of 2023. If this means a re­turn to the days of 600 plus mur­ders per year, time will tell. We don’t have a gang prob­lem in T&T, we have transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime cre­at­ing and dri­ving gang­land and its evo­lu­tion. We must now po­lice those pulling the strings not on­ly the mar­i­onettes!”

New il­lic­it in­dus­tries

While the Gov­ern­ment and the busi­ness sec­tor have re­peat­ed­ly called for new eco­nom­ic sec­tors and in­dus­tries to be de­vel­oped to solve the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, Figueira’s re­search pa­per shows that new “in­dus­tries” are de­vel­op­ing but these are il­lic­it in­dus­tries that are not re­lat­ed to le­git­i­mate eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

In the re­search pa­per, Figueira ex­plained that the use of il­lic­it guns as the dom­i­nant in­stru­ment of mur­der in T&T for the 2017 to 2023 pe­ri­od de­mands an un­der­stand­ing of the il­lic­it small weapons trade in T&T.

He said ac­quir­ing a steady af­ford­able sup­ply of weapons from the AR-15 and AK-47 plat­forms by the Colom­bian af­fil­i­ates and the un­af­fil­i­at­ed in T&T be­came an im­per­a­tive vi­tal­ly nec­es­sary to de­fend their hege­mo­ny and sur­vive.

“An arms race in the il­lic­it trades of T&T then ap­peared in the T&T il­lic­it trades in the sec­ond decade of the 21st cen­tu­ry which in­ten­si­fied the na­ture of the en­gage­ment dri­ving it at times to para­noia with a pen­chant for ter­ror­ism. A con­comi­tant de­vel­op­ment aris­ing from the re­ac­ti­va­tion of the US sup­ply pipelines was the smug­gling of re­load­ing ma­chines, black pow­der, det­o­na­tors and bul­lets for re­load­ing spent car­tridges to live rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.”

He al­so said this new il­lic­it in­dus­try then cre­at­ed a de­mand for spent shells overnight where all gun ranges be­came tar­gets of sup­ply for this valu­able com­mod­i­ty.

“The land­scape of the il­lic­it trades has been or­gan­i­cal­ly changed, di­ver­si­fied with the pres­ence of two transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime groups in the il­lic­it trades of T&T un­leash­ing im­pacts up­on the so­cial or­der of T&T nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore in the his­to­ry of the il­lic­it trades of T&T. As this new mod­el de­vel­ops, evolves fur­ther im­pacts are forth­com­ing on the so­cial or­der of T&T.”