French report fingers big T&T business in drug trade

PORT-OF-SPAIN — An international anti-drug research agency based in France has submitted a report that points accusing fingers to “big business” as active collaborators in the illegal narcotics trade in Trinidad and Tobago.

The report, first carried in the Sunday Guardian, fails to identify specific names of those involved in the drug trafficking ring.

Earlier, the paper had quoted from the same report as claiming that the stage was being set for a leading drug trafficker businessman to become prime minister of the country within the next five years.

But National Security Minister Howard Chin Lee was quick to dismiss the veracity of the report. He was also contemptuous in his comments of the report being leaked to just that newspaper and not made available to other sections of the media or his government, as far as he was made aware.

However, Venezuela’s ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, Hector Cassy Azocar, was yesterday quoted as saying that his embassy and government were “carefully” considering the claims in the report from the French-based international research organisation that focuses on the geopolitics of the narcotics trade.

Officials of the United States and French diplomatic missions in Port-of-Spain have also expressed their concerns about the implications of claims in the research organisation’s report, according to yesterday’s Sunday Guardian. In particular of businessmen operating “front businesses” while in fact engaging in the lucrative illegal drug trade.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning, in response to a question, said while he also has no evidence to support the claims contained in the report, he would not be “suprised” by what he has been told. He surprised that ongoing investigations were taking place to “unveil the links between politicians and the drug trade”.

The report outlined in some detail how businessmen were laundering money through covert operations, such as the used car trademall, retail stores and investments in services industry; rental of apartments and houses in wealthy neighbourhoods near Port-of-Spain, and feeding the retail crack and cocaine trade that is being run primarily by Afro-Trinidadians.

A significant omission of the report is the naming of either the specific French-based research group or the title of the report.

But it claims to have some 60 worldwide “correspondents” in addition to some 100 journalists and researchers who specialise in the drug trade. The organisation is said to be “partly funded” by the European Foundation which is an advisory body to the United Nations anti-drug policies.

The organisation’s report has detailed description of the operations of drug trade route maps, a complex network that positions Trinidad and Tobago as a “crucial transit hub” from which drugs, mainly cocaine and heroin, are distributed not only to other Caribbean states and territories, but Canada, United States of America, Japan, Australia, United Kingdom, Norway, Germany and countries in Africa.

Panday edges out Manning

PORT-OF-SPAIN — In the latest opinion poll to be released here by the New York-based North American Caribbean Teachers’ Association (NACTA), Prime Minister Patrick Manning has been edged out in popularity by former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday by four points

In the event of a new election being held shortly, according to NACTA, Manning will receive 28 per cent support from the 572 respondents to Panday’s 32.

The survey, which has a high credibility rating, based on projections on outcomes at previous elections, and more recently predicted another possible hung parliment of 18-18 seats each between the parties of Manning and Panday, raised a range of issues with potential voters.

Among them were voters’ preference for prime minister; Panday’s recent accusation that President ANR Robinson used “race” to appoint Manning as prime minister when he did not win an election, and the threatened libel suit by Robinson against Panday for his allegation.

According to the initial results of the poll, as appeared in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper a large portion of potential voters reject both Manning and Panday as prime minister with a whopping 40 per cent saying that neither was no suitable for that office.