What the US courts are exposing

BY Staff
Published: October 6, 2008 in Editorial

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.

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8 Comments

opgy says:

October 6, 2008 at 9:36 am

Lets continue to dream of better days!!

SSDD

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Joe Coxall says:

October 6, 2008 at 9:21 pm

The war on drugs is a farce my friends, little countries like Guyana are being pressured to bring it under control, but where ever there is a demand for a product there will be a supplier, it is called capitalist trade my friends, some of the most prominent families in America participated in illegal liquor trade during prohibition.

A lot of the housing development in Miami was done with drug money, it is a well known fact, but you dont hear the media making a fuss about it.

Now where is that demand. the USA my friends. mules are being locked up, all of the time along with low level drug pushers. My friends, the people who use and can afford these drugs are some of the same people that tell us that we must use our resources to fight it. Yes, you heard me right, every one of them are drug users on a regular basis, all the way up to Capital Hill.

The drug incarceration business is a multimilliion dollar enterprise in the USA. It supports entire industries that use prison labor for pennies for an hour of labour.
It supports the employment of hundreds of American companies that supply services to the prison population.

They do not want to stop it, since it assures a steady cheap work force, with dozens of spin off enterprises that donate regularly back into the system.

The best part of this farse, is that they get credited for declaring a war on drugs, while little countries like Guyana get discredited for encouraging it.

During the Iran /contra scandal, they were selling the same drugs to finance the war in the middle east, now these very same people are labelling us as willing participants in an evil drug trade.

If all of the buildings, houses and vehicles I saw on my recent visit to Guyana represent the trappings of the drug trade, then we should stand up as a people and applaude. We have just surpassed Columbia, as the leading drug enterprise on the South American continent.

Joe.

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Fulano de Tal says:

October 7, 2008 at 1:27 pm

Very interesting article. Unlike some who feel we should applaud such attrocities, I sincerely believe that there are enough natural resources i Guyana for our citizens to make honest monies. What we NEED is PROPER ADMINISTRATION & things will be better. Drug traders need protection, since the protection they require cannot be covered by the legitimate channels they recruit shady characters. These questionable characters because of their lacks (of pride, education, morals, values, principles, etc) usually commit heinous crimes because of their “untouchable” status or “connections”. Then those who feel threatened or are affected by these actions seek their own form of protection. Ultimately what we have are decadent societies & anarchy. WE DO NOT NEED DRUG PUSHERS. If there is a demand let the supply come from elsewhere. We do not have the resources for it. Another case in point is the fact that the illegal drug bussinessmen have a VERY unfair advantage over legitimate hard working businessmen here in Guyana.

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- Joe Coxall says:
  
  October 7, 2008 at 7:22 pm
  
  Well, my friend, I am not condoning the drug trafficking trade. All I am trying to do is reveal the other side of the story that is never told.
  
  Joe.
michael tannassee says:

October 7, 2008 at 9:00 pm

The drug trade ,, relative to Gy is a wheel in a wheel ,, GUYANA is being used as a screen ,, the larger shipments of both cocaine and ganja ,, r moving from points both east and west of the Andes ,, the jungles and wide forests ,, on the east makes it quite a task to stop it,, ships dock at manaus ,, which is where the largest tributary of the mighty Amazon ,, the rio negro that originate on the easter side of colombia begins,,,and the movement of cocaine using this river to get it to the ships that dock at manaus ,, every body get s paid ,, including the amerindians ,, who are the guides / look out all the way from point A to point B ,and the detour ,, which is GY ,, the wheel in the wheel !……..

Reply
- drumup_change says:
  
  October 10, 2008 at 10:24 am
  
  ……..the court is brooklyn county court snnot the bronx….i
Nathaniel Smith says:

October 12, 2008 at 8:36 am

These revelations are but the tip of the iceburg. This is a result of the distrust they have for the Guyanese population.

The PPP/CIVIC are reliving the days they wanted us to believe were the darkest of our history. The main difference is that totalitarianism and police state are mild descriptors of what they have forced upon Guyanese.

There is paranoia in the ranks of the leadership hence the alliance with Roger Khan,phantom squad,and apparatchiks in the joint services. Every association outside of their control is being viewed with suspicion and unease, important reasons to have the Roger Khans. Where is the CIVIC groups that “fought “for democracy? Hope they are being attentive .

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Pantha says:

October 9, 2008 at 9:07 am

Got to go with you on this one, Joe. Every study I have ever read, every book, every in-depth analysis, suggests that this is just another version of Prohibition (and we all know how well that worked), and it will never succeed. It’s politics and greed and a certain covert racism involved. (As a side issue, my 15 year old daughter told me it was easier for her to get drugs down the street than it is for her to buy cigarettes or booze…in Canada! imagine that!)

The world should simply legalize these drugs, regulate the hell out of them, tax them to death, and spend the windfall setting up education and treatment centers galore. They seem to work better than jail sentences, from what I’ve been able to discover.

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