Although an inquiry is to be done into self-confessed drug baron Barry Dataram’s allegations that the Customs Anti-Narcotic Unit (CANU) is aiding the local drug trade, Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan says that he does not believe the claims.
However, Ramjattan explained that despite his personal stance, he will await the findings of the report from a Board of Inquiry that will be set up soon on the order of President David Granger.
“I disbelieve all of them but that’s my opinion. It’s like Pablo Escobar saying that the Drug Enforcement Agency is not a good thing because, of course, he has interests. But indeed we have to pay attention to what was said, to clear it up and I want to believe that an inquiry would be the best way to deal with it,” Ramjattan said yesterday.
Granger on Wednesday announced that a decision was made by the members of the National Security Committee (NSC) to set up a Board of Inquiry (BoI), which will determine the “veracity of the information” which was broadcast on Monday on the HGPTV nightly newscast.
This newspaper understands that Dataram will be asked to repeat his allegations before the BoI, as part of its investigation.
During an interview broadcast on Monday, Dataram, who admitted that he is involved in the drug trade but said he has never been convicted on a criminal charge, accused a high ranking CANU official of being involved in the drug trade. He added that the rank would take as much as $10 million to allow cocaine to leave the country. He said that drug lords would pay $5 million before the shipment and the remainder would be paid after the shipment.
Dataram also alleged that the majority of the drugs seized by CANU returns to the streets.
Dataram is currently before the courts on a charge of trafficking over 120 kilogrammes of cocaine.
Ramjattan said that he believes that the self-confessed drug lord was attempting to besmirch the country’s anti-narcotics drug agency due to the current charges against him.
“I have an opinion on it and it’s because there is a certain charge that is right now going on, he probably feels that it is about time to tarnish the CANU officials. But we are going to have an inquiry and I hope that the inquiry is going to bring out the truth,” he said.
He added that when such toxic allegations befall any disciplined force, it lowers the morale of the members. “That is what rocks your policing agency when the tarnishing, damaging comes and in this way it breaks the foundation of it. It kills and frustrates the officers and especially coming from fellows who are self-confessed drug dealers,” he asserted.
He said that he believes that those fingered will be exonerated and will leave it to the course of justice to prove otherwise.
Weighing in on the issue, Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud said that he too was awaiting the BoI report. “Allegations aren’t anything new. The government has taken a position to have a Board of Inquiry commissioned to look into this matter and I await anxiously for the developments of that,” Persaud said when asked for comment yesterday.
Persaud rubbished allegations that cocaine to be destroyed is sometimes replaced with flour and baking soda and later smuggled onto the streets by drug enforcement officials. “Field tests are done on large amounts of drugs before they are burnt or dumped overboard. The procedures we adopt to do these things are to clear any doubts that there is anything else being destroyed…I am confident that the procedures we have in place prevents that from happening,” he asserted.
CANU has denied Dataram’s allegations but welcomed his confession of his involvement in the drug trade.
In a statement issued on Monday, it suggested a link between Dataram’s allegations and what it considered to be his “unease” over the commencement of his trial for the alleged possession of a large quantity of cocaine that was found concealed in shrimp at his Diamond house.
Dataram, his wife and two friends, who were held during a raid of the Diamond Housing Scheme property, are charged with possession of 284 pounds of cocaine for trafficking.
