Trinidad Express) – Soca, the music, is loved by the masses across this country. However, SOCA, the acronym of the United Kingdom counter-drug force, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, should be feared by drug traffickers.
Like the music, the agency has made waves across the country, your flag does not matter, as you would be chipping straight to jail when they get you—and they promise that they would catch you.
SOCA is an intelligence-led agency formed in the UK in April 2006 that tackles Class A drugs and organised immigration crime as top priorities. Other priorities are fraud against individuals and the private sector, hi-tech crime, counterfeiting, firearms, serious robbery and recovery of the proceeds of crime.
SOCA was responsible for the arrest, extradition and conviction of two Tobagonians, Owen Alfred and Oswin Moore, who are currently serving time in a UK prison. Alfred, 41, of Idle Wild, Scarborough, was sentenced to 18 years, while his co-accused Moore, 42, of Big George Junction, Orange Hill Road, Patience Hill, was sentenced to 15 years on March 31, after they were found guilty by a 12-member jury. “Alfred and Moore have paid a heavy price for importing cocaine into the UK and are now in jail thousands of miles away from their family and friends,” said SOCA executive director Trevor Pearce.
This is the threat that the agency has issued to all Trinbagonians and UK citizens alike who wish to deal in the risky business of drug trafficking. Not only would you be caught, but you would be forced to spend several years in prison, away from immediate friends and family. And at the end of it all you would be placed on an aircraft, sent back home and forbidden to return.
“Targeting the UK is a high risk business and it will not be tolerated,” Pearce stated in a media statement.
“Drug trafficking causes misery to local communities and funds other criminal activity,” Pearce added.
It is with this as their mantra, coupled with the threat of hunting you down, catching you and prosecuting you, that the agency hopes would re-route the thinking of all aspiring drug traffickers.
Alfred and Moore were said to have been part of an international conspiracy to import 13 kilogrammes of cocaine into the United Kingdom over the period June 1, 2002 to August 31, 2006. Another Tobagonian, Dexter Thomas escaped the clutches of SOCA when he appealed the May 27, 2008 decision by Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls to extradite him and his two co-accused.
On June 26, Moore and Alfred were extradited, while Thomas was set free by High Court Judge Justice Gregory Smith on September 30, on the grounds that there was not sufficient evidence to extradite him. SOCA has vowed, however, not to give up.
Thirty of SOCA’s investigators were successful in tracking the phone calls of nine UK nationals all believed to be in cahoots with Moore and Alfred. The nine were sentenced to a total of 144 years.
Money transactions between the two countries to pay couriers to swallow up to one kilogramme of cocaine were also uncovered by the agency. Letters that stated that the couriers were visiting the UK for vacation, job opportunities and the most popular visiting relatives, were unmasked by the agency during their investigation.
Local police officers were not out the loop as they were in constant dialogue with their UK counterparts. Eight officers of the Organised Crime Narcotics and Firearm Bureau (OCNFB) made their way to the UK and testified not only against Moore and Alfred but against the nine UK co-conspirators. Tobago nationals caught trying to board flights to the UK were also arrested and are now serving time in prison in Tobago.
