Copra not cocaine

DEOCHAN RAMDHANIE, who was freed on a life sentence for drug trafficking by the Privy Council last week, insisted yesterday that copra, not cocaine, was the source of his earnings. Speaking to Sunday Newsday during a family gathering at a restaurant in South Trinidad, the 40-year-old businessman insisted that he had been wrongfully accused of cocaine trafficking and spoke of how he and his late father, Mantoor, earned their fortune selling copra, fish and shrimp in Icacos. Asked how his family came to earn millions in the fishing village of Icacos, Ramdhanie said he first ventured into the fishing business, but it went “bust”. He later began working on his father’s coconut estate and by age 29 was the owner of his own copra company. Ramdhanie said he sold over $700,000 in copra to the Cocount Growers Association.

He said he thought he and his father were being kidnapped the day police arrested them in Point Fortin. On that fateful day, he recalled, he was taking his father to the doctor. Ramdhanie who escaped from the Princes Town Magistrates’ Court during his trial and was held in Tucupita, Venezuela, insisted that he knew little about the mainland and had no regional or international connections for trafficking drugs. He said not only was he wrongly accused of cocaine trafficking, he never got a fair trial. He said the injustice to him was glaring when his attorneys made applications to the court in confiscation proceedings to prove that he earned his money from copra, not drug trafficking. “I always wondered why my lawyers never got replies from the CGA, for documents showing how much copra I sold,” he said.

“Imagine the confiscation order was that I serve a life term imprisonment after the life term for trafficking. I would have to serve another life term after I died.” Ramdhanie said he intends to pick up the pieces of his life by rehabilitating his father’s coconut estates which are overgrown. “All the money I had and my father had was spent on legal fees for the past nine years,” he said. He said he intends to approach the bank to restart the copra business in Icacos in the name of a company he owned - Copra Industries Ltd. As a waitress served him onion rings, shrimp kebabs and garlic bread at the restaurant yesterday, Ramdhanie commented that the transition from jail food, which was mainly bread and butter, “will take time”. “I intend to eat curried shrimp and maybe lobster,” he said, although he ate little at the restaurant, but drank several glasses of coconut water.

He told Sunday Newsday he intends to send his teenage daughter and son to Canada to live. “I sending my children to live in Canada. But I will stay here in Icacos.” On Friday, Ramdhanie went shopping with his wife, because he needed new clothes. Since his release, he said, he has had very little sleep. Very soon, he will hold Hindu prayers to complete the ritual for his father’s funeral. He said he wanted some closure to his father’s death and is looking forward to a bright Christmas. Yesterday, as Ramdhanie dined with his family, his attorneys Mark Seepersad and Gerald Ramdeen brought word that the State will this week file proceedings in the High Court to release $3.5 million in frozen assets. They said Director of Public Prosecutions Geoffrey Henderson informed them on Friday of the State’s intention. The State will also pay Ramdhanie approximately 40,000 pounds for the legal fees he spent defending the charge straight up to the Privy Council.