Chinese man in Trinidad sex slave ring had Guyanese passport

(Trinidad Guardian) An Asian mafia con­nec­tion is fu­elling the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar world of sex slaves in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­tel­li­gence sources close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion have re­vealed to Guardian Me­dia.

These star­tling de­tails be­gan to emerge as po­lice gath­ered more in­for­ma­tion af­ter crack­ing what they be­lieve was a ma­jor sex and drug ring op­er­at­ing in West­ern Trinidad on Wednes­day.

On Wednes­day morn­ing of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT), Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU), Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Branch (FIB) and Child Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) ar­rest­ed at least 18 sus­pects in West and East Trinidad and res­cued 19 South Amer­i­can fe­males.

The young women were res­cued from the Stir Fry King Restau­rant along Ari­api­ta Av­enue in Port-of-Spain, a sprawl­ing house with a swim­ming pool along Morne Co­co Road near St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege and an­oth­er up­scale home at 61 West­ern Cir­cle, West­moor­ings.

Sources close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion say the West­moor­ings home is owned by Edgar Aboud, who rent­ed out the home sev­er­al months ago to a Chi­nese na­tion­al.

Aboud, who spoke briefly by tele­phone with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, dis­tanced him­self from the mat­ter, say­ing he had noth­ing to do with the in­ci­dent and “knew noth­ing about it.”

In fact, Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that Aboud was in the process of break­ing the ten­ant lease for the prop­er­ty and sources close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion said a ter­mi­na­tion of lease let­ter had been placed in the ten­ant’s mail­box some time ago.

Doc­u­ments of a 33-year-old Chi­nese na­tion­al, who po­lice sus­pect is one of the mas­ter­minds of the transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­work and rent­ed the West­moor­ings home, were ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia. The man had a Guyanese pass­port and a Ja­maican li­cense.

“You have to re­mem­ber the Asian net­work is al­so next door,” said a source close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The source in­di­cat­ed that the Chi­nese na­tion­al was still at large and they were putting things in place to en­sure he was cap­tured soon.

The on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this il­lic­it trade con­tin­ued to un­fold as in­tel­li­gence sources de­scribed in de­tail how the un­der­ground net­work had in­fil­trat­ed al­most every cor­ner of the coun­try.

“They want chil­dren and they want them high on co­caine and hero­in and then deal with their ghosts be­cause when you get them so high you can do them any­thing. And is pow­er­ful Asian mafia, pow­er­ful and I mean pow­er­ful! And their group is not at all an-in­clu­sive group. Their group is an ex­clu­sive group,” one high-rank­ing in­tel­li­gence source told Guardian Me­dia.

The source ex­plained that the mon­ey laun­der­ing part of the busi­ness went hand in hand with the ex­ploita­tion of the young girls. “Re­mem­ber you could buy a girl and sell her over and over and over. So you run your rental and when you done, you sell your rental,” the law en­force­ment source ex­plained.

The source re­vealed that girls are brought in batch­es every six months from Venezuela, most­ly via boat, af­ter the arrange­ments are all made with the help of com­plic­it of­fi­cials. Girls can fetch up to $10,000 a night to high-end Asian clien­tele.