The reported visit of a UK expert to train drug trafficker Roger Khan in the use of sophisticated spy equipment provides another lead for law enforcement to follow with a view to uncovering details of his operations here.
As information flows from New York court proceedings involving Khan and his former lawyer, Robert Simels, the local authorities are being afforded openings which would allow them to unravel his network in this country. But so far neither the government nor the police appears to have displayed any appetite for pursuing these leads. When asked about killings here linked to Roger Khan, President Bharrat Jagdeo said that the police would have to investigate while the police say they would first have to get information from the US courts.
The latest glimpse into the extent of Khan’s operations comes in documents filed on behalf of Simels which said that Carl Chapman, a representative of Smith Myers Communica-tions had travelled to Guyana to train Khan. The name of Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy was also named in this arrangement but he has since strongly denied having any connection with it.
Sources say that the Chief Immigration Officer, who is the Commissioner of Police should be able to confirm the entry and exit of the man who came to train Khan, and that this would provide the initial basis for investigating where he had stayed, who he possibly had met and the location where any training had been conducted. If for instance he stayed at a hotel with surveillance cameras or used traceable phones, these would constitute leads.
In a letter recently to Stabroek News, Eusi Kwayana said that that allegation about the trainer travelling to Guyana was one that was at least verifiable.
“If a company agent in fact arrived in Guyana as alleged in New York to train one or more persons in the use of the spyware, that takes us somewhere; such a visitor would have left footprints,” Kwayana said in his letter.
He went on to say that it was “an unreasonable claim” by President Jagdeo that he knew nothing about any force fighting on behalf of the government when he has repeatedly said he had information about those who were fighting against the government.
Khan had said in 2006 that he had been engaged in crime-fighting activities on behalf of the government and his lawyers had also made that claim in New York. However, President Bharrat Jagdeo, who back in March after Khan’s guilty plea said he had never met Khan neither did he know him, commented that Khan had said several things in the past and he did not give any weight to his words.
Detachment
“This is a level of detachment that passes all understanding,” Kwayana said of Jagdeo’s claims.
While the police have claimed that they had the spyware which was seized from Khan and others in December 2003 the US authorities have said the equipment was shipped from Guyana to the US by Khan’s former lawyer, Robert Simels. Kwayana is of the opinion that the police should produce the equipment and demonstrate that it is working.
Stabroek News was told that all the police received was a laptop that was not functioning; the spyware equipment, which has software that is downloaded onto laptops, was never in their possession. Even President Jagdeo at a June 2008 press conference had said that the equipment never worked.
“We’ve also requested information on Roger Khan’s alleged killing of 200 persons… when I spoke with the Commissioner of Police he said they are in possession of the equipment and that it never worked,” the President had said. He had also claimed that that it was not the Government of Guyana that gave permission for the export of sensitive technology from the USA, but rather the US government.
“If it is sensitive technology then it has to be classified by the US government not by the Government of Guyana, so if someone has to export sensitive equipment then he/she will have to seek permission from the US government who has classified this, so it doesn’t make sense, the allegation that Government of Guyana gave permission,” he stated.
Both the PNCR and the Alliance For Change (AFC) have repeatedly called for an investigations into Khan’s activities in Guyana, but so far there has been no move by the administration to have such an investigation done.
“If somebody comes into the country, they ought to be an record once they come in the proper channel, so they need to go and check it out,” PNCR-1G parliamentarian Basil Williams in a recent invited comment to Stabroek News said. He was speaking of Chapman who, according to US court documents, had entered Guyana in 2002 to train Khan and others.
However, Williams was quick to note that it was the government which controlled the immigration system and he did not see them being in a hurry to do any such verification.
Sources point out, however, that the police also don’t seem keen to investigate any of the leads originating from the US and appear quite comfortable to keep saying that they have contacted the US government for information and are awaiting this without taking any initiative on the local front.
It was pointed out that it was very strange that Khan, who has now admitted to trafficking in 150 kilogrammes of cocaine between 2002 and 2006 and who was also a fugitive from American justice, was during that period able to set up a number of businesses in Guyana without the authorities being aware of his drug-trafficking activities.
GuySuCo land
And recently President Jagdeo sought to explain how Khan, at a time when he was a fugitive from the US and had been on trial here for possession of high-powered weapons, managed to purchase public land that was put up for sale by GuySuCo.
The purchase was authorised by the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc (Transfer of property) Order, dated October 8, 2003 and signed by Jagdeo, made under the Public Corporations Act and published in the Official Gazette.
The President at a recent press conference had explained the Order for the sale of GuySuCo property at Block “Q 1” at Providence, East Bank Demerara, to Khan’s Classic Resources Inc had been made as a result of a public tendering process. “Unless you have a conviction against a person, then you can’t say you can’t tender for public land,” he had said.
He had said that several companies had been allowed to bid and Classic Resources had won. “It was in the name of the company and it was through public tender,” he had told the media adding that “Roger Khan was not called in and given the land on the side of a vesting order, it was through public tender.”
Asked specifically how Khan came close to securing a forestry lease for land in the southern part of the country, Jagdeo emphasised the fact that Khan had never been granted a lease by the Government of Guyana. “[He] did not, in spite of several reports in the Stabroek News – erroneous reports in the Stabroek News and I think they influenced other groups to believe that [he] got it,” he had said.
According to documentation seen by Stabroek News, on October 5, 2005 it was agreed to by a majority vote of the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) Board that three companies, including Aurelius Inc, which was controlled by Khan, would be awarded State Forest Exploratory Permits (SFEP). At subsequent meetings of the GFC Board, the granting of the permit to the company was discussed and considered to be a fait accompli. However, concerns were also raised at the meetings about the inadequate due diligence done in relation to the company, in particular as to who owned the shares. It was agreed that in relation to future applications for SFEPs a more rigorous examination of the bona fides of applicants would be done.
By the next year, however, it was revealed that Cabinet had not approved the SFEP for Aurelius Inc, despite the board’s all clear. The permit process for the company was halted in wake of the allegations contained in the US Drug Strategy Report of that year which named Khan as a known drug trafficker who had a controlling interest in Aurelius Inc.
The report, however, incorrectly stated that the permit had been granted. At the time, observers noted that once the board had given the green light it was automatic that the permit would be handed over.
‘Incontrovertible’
In 2004, State Forest Areas to be allocated SFEPs were publicly advertised and Aurelius Inc applied for the award of one of these permits in accordance with the GFC approved procedures. The GFC reviewed the application and was satisfied that it met all of the necessary technical and financial requirements. Additionally, the GFC Board’s Technical Sub-Committee subsequently reviewed and endorsed the recommendation for the award of the SFEP. Once a permit is awarded, a forest inventory, a strategic forest management plan and an environmental and social impact assessment have to be completed before a Wood Cutting Lease or a Timber Sales Agreement is granted.
Recently PNCR-1G MP Debra Backer told reporters that available evidence points to the Jagdeo administration protecting or facilitating Khan’s activities, with the most recent connection being the alleged aid provided to him by Dr Ramsammy.
“The facts are incontrovertible,” Backer, had said noting that evidence emerging from court hearings, the information provided by American government sources, and the revelations by Khan’s lawyers point to the supportive involvement of the administration.
The US government has said Khan was leader of a Georgetown-based cocaine trafficking organisation, which was backed by a “paramilitary squad that would murder, threaten, and intimidate” others at his directive.
The organisation imported large quantities of cocaine into Guyana, which was then shipped to the Eastern District of New York and other places for distribution. The US government said Khan’s enforcers committed violent acts and murders on Khan’s orders that were directly in furtherance of his drug trafficking conspiracy. The paramilitary squad was referred to as the ‘Phantom Squad,’ which a confidential US source said was responsible for “at least 200 extra-judicial killings” in Guyana between 2002 and 2006.