The cocaine untouchables

"And who are the greater criminals — those who sell the instruments of death, or those who buy them and use them?": Robert E Sherwood.

Trinidad and Tobago’s major cocaine importers and distributors, merchants of death all of them, appear, for the most part, immune from arrest and prosecution, whether the arrest and prosecution should be initiated by the Ministry of National Security’s growing legions of agencies or from the Ministry of Finance’s Inland Revenue Department.

They have incomes and enjoy lifestyles clearly not reflected in their Income Tax returns. They are the untouchables of the 21st century. Almost three quarters of a century after the arrest of notorious American gangster, Al Capone, by the then United States Bureau of Internal Revenue on charges of Income Tax evasion, and his subsequent imprisonment in 1931, the authorities here seem either unwilling or unable to learn.

The authorities have turned and continue to turn a blind eye (forgive the cliche) to involvement by the drug trade’s principals, even as they express horror at the growing number of young men killing and maiming each other as they battle for the crumbs on the new slave master’s table. The larger society must understand that the drug related and/or gang related murders plaguing the land did and do not have their genesis in the ghettos of Laventille, Morvant, St Barb’s and the list goes on, but in the boardrooms of companies of wealthy entrepreneurs of illegal drugs.

They are the ultimate murderers, accessories before and after the fact. They promote themselves as concerned citizens. They give generously to charities, places of worship, in all too often successful attempts to come over as guardians of morality. They mimic other and honest business folk. All of this is to enable them to blend into the landscape of genuine corporate benefactors. They hold cocktail parties and receptions again mimicking the ways of decent corporate citizens, smiling on cue for media cameras. Their strategies all too often successful are designed to seek to blur the gap between the honest hardworking businessmen/women and themselves. I wish to emphasise, even though I accept that there should be no need to do this, that the majority of business people in Trinidad and Tobago are hardworking, honest and committed citizens. But they must speak out, continuously, or rather continue to speak out, against the evil few who peddle merchandising of death, and the seeming inaction both of the law enforcement agencies re-seeking to apprehend them and the failure of the Inland Revenue Department to charge them with failing to declare income.

I ask the question: Is there a law for one set of people and a different law for another set? Such a situation was bad in colonial days, but infinitely worse if existing today.

I remember in the 1940s, when a "respected" accountant at a nationally known company embezzled $19,000 of her employer’s money and was charged, taken to court, found guilty and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. This was surprising because in many other instances involved persons had been asked to repay the sums and no prosecution followed. I wish to make it clear that I am not questioning the right of the judge some 60 years ago to impose the apparently lenient sentence. In San Fernando, however, again in the 1940s, a man broke into the then popular Miss Ella’s parlour, off Broadway and Keate Street, and stole a penny (two cents). The judge gave him a stern lecture and five years in jail. The point I make here is this: the authorities appear unwilling to even charge the drug lords.

The young men and women who pull the triggers of guns and kill others in drug-related battles for turfs are correctly charged. But the drug importers and distributors (the major ones that is) who provide the peewats with the illegal narcotics to sell, and the guns and the misplaced "incentive" to kill, are not being touched. Instead, they live in seemingly well fortified houses, enjoy affluent lifestyles, and hailed by society. I had spoken earlier of Al Capone. In the age of prohibition in the United States, in which it was illegal to sell alcoholic beverages Capone provided wealthy and not so wealthy customers with liquor. He, too, was a seeming untouchable in the 1920s and is best or is it worst remembered for the infamous "1929 St Valentine’s Day massacre," in which seven rival gangsters were lined up against a wall and shot. Capone was reported to have several corrupt public officials and p volice officers on his payroll. In addition, to the illegal sale of liquor, Capone provided his clientele with prostitutes, narcotics and protected places in which to gamble. All this would end when the Bureau of Internal Revenue (renamed the Internal Revenue Service in 1934) stepped in and arrested and charged Capone with Income Tax evasion. He was sentenced to jail in 1934 and confined for eight years. I switch gears and move from the negative to the positive. Last week Tuesday, 35 former pre-schoolers of the All In One Child Development Centre, Beetham Gardens, Laventille, who graduated on July 9 and will attend primary schools from September received welcome "Back to School" supplies from the West Mall branch of Mohammed Book Store Associates Limited. Mr Wayne Jordan received the school supplies from Ms Zalina Mohammed, manager of the store on behalf of the former pre-schoolers. The presentation had been on the initiative of Mrs Monica Headley, of the American Women’s Club, following an approach by Mr Peter Aleong, Chairman of the Board of Education. At the presentation, in addition to the above, were Ms Lara Quentral Thomas, President of the Rotary Club of Central Port-of-Spain, Mr Andrew Joseph, Chairman of the Club’s Community Service Committee, and Mrs Charmaine Anderson Vice Principal of All In One. The All In One Child Development Centre is a continuing project of the Rotary Club of Central Port-of-Spain.

What is significant here is that at four concerned groups — Mohammed’s Book Store, The American Women’s Club, the Rotary Club of Central Port-of-Spain and the Board of All In One — have come together to assist 35 children from Beetham Gardens on their march to upward mobility. What Mohammed’s Bookstore, the American Women’s Club, the Rotary Club of Central Port-of-Spain and the All In One Board have done is to give the kids a keep on the first rungs of the ladder to the mountain top. Or as Aleong puts it: "we are determined that they must be success stories."