Economy & Trade, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, North America

CARIBBEAN: Raid Uncovers Multinational Drug Ring

Bert Wilkinson

PARAMARIBO, Suriname, Jun 22 2006 (IPS) - Relaxing at home in a hammock as he reflected on recent events, shopkeeper Bheim Pershad wondered how his youngest son became a key player in a multinational drug and gun smuggling ring that funneled huge amounts of cocaine from Colombia to Europe and the U.S. with virtual impunity – until last week.

“I am retired now and don’t want my family to get involved in any illegal business,” the 64-year-old former civil servant told IPS, two days after a local police SWAT team raided his home and found 104 kilos of cocaine stashed in a bedroom in a residential section of the capital.

In relative terms in this northern part of South America, the find was not that significant, but authorities say the intelligence that led to discovery of the ring that flowed from the arrest of Ravien Pershad, 30, four nationals from neighbouring Guyana and six other Surinamese will prove to be invaluable in dismantling a group that created mayhem in several countries.

The young Pershad willingly took heavily armed and mean-looking SWAT police to the home of his parents, and also handed them other locations, leading to the discovery of an additional 100 kilos, the arrest of the others and the discovery of two weapons at another safe house.

As authorities have now found out, Colombian suppliers used small- and medium-sized propeller planes to air drop hundreds of kilos of cocaine into remote areas of badly under-policed Guyana and moved the load to Suriname by water or road for onward shipment to Europe and the United States. Tonnes of the illegal drugs left the two countries this way. The multi-million-dollar racket has been operating for years, police say.

Chan Santokhi, Suriname’s justice minister, says the arrest of the group, including Guyanese kingpin Shaheed Roger Khan, 35, came after two years of diligent work involving the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Guyanese and Surinamese police to get to the bottom of an organisation that allegedly killed dozens of people to protect its empire, raided police and military armouries for guns, ammunition and grenades and corrupted officials in high positions in the region.

The government of Surinamese President Ronald Venetiaan had for years complained about the Colombian connection in the drug trade, saying that a thriving arms-for-cocaine business had developed between traffickers belonging to FARC, the leftist guerrilla movement in Colombia, and players in Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname.

For Santhoki, last week’s raids and the arrests of Khan, three former Guyanese policemen and the Surinamese contingent meant “that two years of diligent work gathering intelligence” on the ground has finally begun to pay off. He described some of the players as “threats to the national, regional and international stability of countries.” It was now up to police and government from both countries to smash the ring completely, he contended.

Because of the level of trafficking and the Colombian connection, Suriname has approved new legislation dealing with membership in a criminal organisation, a legal strategy to ensure that traffickers who hire smart lawyers cannot evade jail time on ordinary drug charges once there is evidence they conspired in an organised criminal enterprise.

Khan and his crew now face up to eight years in prison and extradition to the U.S., where he is wanted for trafficking between Guyana and the U.S. He is also wanted in the New England state of Vermont for drugs and gun running charges there, having fled to his native Guyana in 1993.

But Guyanese police feel that unless local laws are amended in line with Suriname’s to cover membership in a criminal organisation, and unless money laundering and forfeiture acts are tightened, alleged transboundary fugitives like Khan could escape lightly.

“It would help us a lot more if Guyana had dealt with the laundering aspect of the drug trade,” said Police Chief Winston Felix. “We need to totally dismantle these organisations.”

Guyanese Interior Minister Gail Teixeira has said Guyana has no plans to seek the group’s extradition to their native land.

Critics say this is confirmation that authorities are worried about the level of corruption that has penetrated the police, military, judiciary and cabinet from the powerful drug trade.

In March, the U.S. State Department said that drugs and laundering accounted for up to 60 percent of Guyana’s informal economy and up to 20 percent of its gross domestic product.

It criticised the closeness of local authorities to the trade, pointing to the fact that the government had granted a timber concession to a reputed trafficker like Khan knowing full well that the tract was in the jungles of the western interior far from the reaches of law enforcement.

Officials backed down after the State Department report was published and the company has since withdrawn the paperwork for the concession.

Through his attorneys while on the run from police, Khan had boasted in press releases of helping to keep the East Indian-dominated Bharrat Jagdeo administration in power by “having the will and resources” to crush any political ambitions of Guyanese of African origin.

He admitted to forming a death squad that killed criminal suspects during an unusually violent crime wave in 2002-03 that left more than 400 people dead in a country that usually had no more than 50 murders a year.

Authorities stepped up pressure on the groups after Suriname’s military reported the disappearance of several boxes of grenades and ammunition, while the Guyanese military is still hunting for 29 Russian-made AK-47 rifles stolen from an arms depot in February.

Khan fled across the border after raids on places under his control as police looked for the missing weapons. He denied having them but promised to use his resources to help police locate them, offers that were dismissed by officials.