As hard as the PPP/C government and its security apparatus have tried to pretend that drug trafficking and money laundering are being attacked frontally this fiction is being exposed week by week in the courts of New York.
We have argued before in these columns that the fight against the drug superstructure is being conducted by proxy in foreign jurisdictions – the US being number one and the evidence is there for all and sundry to see.
The capture of Roger Khan and the multiplicity of charges he faces in a Bronx courthouse is the best example yet of how an allegedly large network of criminals operated under the radar here without any exposure until the theft of 33 AK-47s and America’s interest in him triggered his capture in Suriname.
Embarrassingly for the government, Mr Khan professed here and from abroad what an integral role he played in assisting the 2001 government in its battle with the escapees and other criminals; the so-called phantom phenomenon which even today echoes in weapons finds and other places. Evidence will eventually be led by the US to show how Mr Khan conspired to import cocaine into the US and the attributes of the criminal enterprise he is alleged to have marshalled in his campaign against the `criminals’. How he came to have had official dealings with government to the extent of almost securing a pivotal forest concession without adequate due diligence is a puzzle that several officials in this and the previous PPP/C administration will eventually have to answer.
But forget Roger Khan for the moment. Two weeks ago Stabroek News reported in detail about a case that played out in New York where a Guyanese banker based in the Big Apple and his radiology technician wife pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering.
It is thought that they might have laundered proceeds for persons connected to Mr Khan. The irony is that it may have been the scrupulous accounting for the laundered proceeds in a ledger which caused this entire operation to cave in.
What the prosecutor in the case had to say was instructive and is an indicator of the volumes of money that are being laundered back and forth between the US and Guyana and other locations.
Prosecutor Michael Ramos: “These two defendants were, at the very least, on the money end of a massive money-laundering scheme that was in support of massive amounts of money flowing back and forth from Guyana to the United States, for the purpose of, quite bluntly, laundering it and hiding its origins”. He went on to say that for many years a location in New York was the central drop-off point for the Guyanese drug trade and the proceeds would be laundered through the `company’ there and returned to Guyana by various means. It was revealed that at least US$10M was recorded as having entered or left the US over the period in question.
Ramos again: “However, we have reason to believe that there may have been multiples of that, over US$10M million, because those are the only instances where couriers were stopped and reported the money, either in and out of customs”. The couple, he added, was expected to earn at least 3% of the laundered sum.
The court record extends to 2001 and the couple pleaded guilty in 2005. Yet over that period, the Guyana government and its security apparatus remained insensible to this particular investigation – the US having decided a long time ago that it could not rely on Georgetown prosecuting these cases. No element of the local operation: the laundered proceeds or the smugglers have been compromised by the law enforcement authorities here. And this has been the intrinsic trend. The quest for other alleged drug accused such as Barry Datram and Terrence Sugrim has been driven by the US and not Guyana. The case also provides an insight into the frenzied construction of ostentatious buildings in many parts of the country, the origins of their financing and the swiftness with which they are often transferred from one interest to another.
There was also another case reported on recently where another Guyanese man was jailed in New York for three years for captaining a team of couriers to smuggle drugs into the US. His operation didn’t disintegrate in the Guyana courts; it dissolved rather meekly in the US courts under the irresistible glare of informant testimony, surveillance etc. Needless to say the guilty man never saw the inside of a local court room. And so the trend continues. More mules were recently held at JFK in New York, eluding a whole series of supposed state security and airline checks. The fiction continues.
While the financial meltdown in the US will inevitably put a squeeze on remittances and make the laundered drug dollar even more attractive, the government would do well to accelerate the work of the select committee on the new anti money-laundering bill and hurry it into operation. It is the only way it can begin to honestly address the damage that the drug trade is doing here and to cut through the woolly rhetoric of its security czars.
Many in society contrast the effete response by the authorities to the drug trade/phantom crimes with the often heavy-handed approach to communities which have been accused of harbouring criminals. The recent discovery of weapons on Regent Street, supposedly by a soldier, has focused attention on this contrast again.
With the appointment of a new head of CANU this is the opportune moment to begin constructing a beachhead in the fight against the drug trade; a credible one and not one that resides in the US judicial system.
