If found here, the Guyanese crew that was robbed of over US$11 million of gold in Curacao almost two years ago could be interviewed by local police to prosecute suspects on the Dutch island.
“The case will be called again on the 21st of November 2014 at 2pm… the public prosecutor will have to inform the judge then if statements were taken… if not, then we will have to ask police in the countries the men are in to get the statements from them,” Public Prosecutor Norman Serphros told Stabroek News last week.
Serphros could not say if the men were still on the Dutch island but Stabroek News has been told that all members of the crew have left. Which countries they are now in remains a mystery and the Curacao prosecutors may have a difficult job locating them.
So far, the Guyana Police has not been asked for help with any aspect of the case. Police Crime Chief Leslie James said that to the best of his knowledge no assistance was asked of local enforcement authorities.
The source told Stabroek News that the vessel, the Summer Bliss, has not been claimed by anyone and remains docked at a Wharf in Willemstad, where it incurs daily demurrage fees. A decision on what to do with it will have to be made by the Curacao Port Authority.
The judge presiding over the case, where seven persons—one from Bonaire, three from Venezuela and three from Curacao including a jeweller who had purchased some of the gold—were charged with varying offences, had asked that the crew be questioned further at a hearing last December. The last hearing was the June 26.
Attorneys for the Curacao locals had maintained that they too were not privy to any details about the crew of the vessel and that the men are pivotal in not only revealing the origin of the gold but the identity of the thieves who stole the bars.
From the inception, observers had pointed out that the crew members were pivotal to the investigation into the origin of the gold but the government here seemed uninterested in gaining access to them. The boat was last seen in Guyana’s waters prior to the heist.
Although a team was sent to the Dutch island by the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) to conduct investigations into whether the gold originated from Guyana, no new information was forthcoming from that visit.
On January 24, 2013, Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Robert Persaud told Stabroek News that the report of the GGMC officers provided no new insight and that the team was not able to find the Guyanese crew members. The matter was now in the hands of local law enforcement authorities, he said.
Persaud had said that determining the origin of the gold was a herculean task for his ministry as no one had come forward to claim the gold.
Up to last month, when he was asked for an update on the case, Persaud maintained that no one had come forward to claim the gold and that there was “nothing new” to report.
Police in Curacao would not release the names of the crew members, since they said the investigation was a sensitive one and that the crewmen were never suspects and could leave the island.
There had been speculation that the gold might have been taken from Guyana to Suriname and mixed with the precious metal from that country and then exported as having originated from Suriname. But Suriname officials have on a number of occasions stated that they were not interested in the investigations as no one from that country had claimed the gold either.
A Surinamese police official this year told this newspaper that, as far as they were concerned, the case is closed at their end. He said that the issue of gold smuggling was not one that his country has an issue with since their taxes and royalties were very low.
President Donald Ramotar had said in June that he believed that smuggling was a small factor in Guyana’s current low gold declaration, while attributing the decline to hoarding.
