During an interview with HGPTV Channel 67’s Nightly News in February this year, recently convicted drug trafficker Barry Dataram alleged that the Custom Anti-Narcotic Unit (CANU) was corrupt and he implicated a high-ranking CANU official in the drug trade, while claiming that the official would take as much as $10 million to allow cocaine to leave the country.
The shocking allegations were taken seriously by the Granger Administration which then appointed Brigadier (Rtd) Bruce Lovell to enquire into the matter. No merit was found in the allegations by Dataram though the inquiry did help to identify weaknesses in the anti-narcotics programme.
Dataram’s allegations were no doubt treated with interest by the administration as there have been longstanding questions surrounding the operations and efficacy of CANU. Dataram was also perceived to be a key figure in the drug trade and might have therefore known what he was talking about.
The fact that this government and segments of law enforcement took Dataram’s claims seriously jars harshly with his embarrassing escape from the jurisdiction days before he was found guilty of trafficking in a large amount of cocaine and sentenced to five years in jail. Now, all and sundry are seeking to excuse themselves from the blame for his flight.
It started right at the top. President Granger when asked on Thursday on the TV programme Public Interest about the escape made some baffling remarks about Dataram not having been Guyanese and not travelling on a Guyanese passport. Even if he wasn’t Guyanese and was favoured with identity papers from some distant autocratic state, it was an incontrovertible fact that Dataram was subject to the laws of this country and on conditional freedom for a court to rule on whether he should lose that freedom. That is the issue at stake. The President also lamented the porous nature of Guyana’s borders, making the argument that it can’t be effectively controlled. This again was an attempt to obfuscate as the real issue was that one man evaded an entire security apparatus that should have been primed for an escape attempt. Following the television programme, the President attempted to retrieve the situation by stating in a separate interview that as a “well known… person of interest,” Dataram’s escape was an error that should’ve been avoided.
As the most security attuned President the country has ever had and with his vast experience in the armed services and intelligence gathering, President Granger would be aware that given Dataram’s track record, his escape is a monumental bungle which must call into question again whether the security services have any idea about what they are doing.
Then it was the turn of the acting Commissioner of Police David Ramnarine who vehemently disclaimed any responsibility for Dataram’s flight and pointed to the decision of the judiciary to grant him bail. While the judiciary will indeed have to examine itself and review these types of ill-judged bail decisions which occur over and over again, the acting Commissioner will be well aware that the police force’s mandate is broad and includes the preventing of illegal exit from the country. If indeed Dataram left by way of the Corentyne `backtrack’, his apprehension by the police should have been the easiest thing given his notoriety and the fact that the law enforcement authorities are intimately knowledgeable of all of the routes.
With the myriad agencies in place to counter the narcotics business and its laundering activities, one wonders how the Ministry of Public Security, the police force, CANU and the Special Organised Crime Unit can explain how it is that Dataram and his wife apparently travelled many miles from Georgetown to the Corentyne Coast and escaped to Suriname without any of these agencies and their hundreds of operatives being any the wiser. Is there any sharing of intelligence or even information between these agencies about figures of interest like Dataram? Has it been established with certitude that Dataram left via the Corentyne backtrack or was that just a feint and he is lying low somewhere biding his time?
A large number of Guyanese would have undoubtedly felt better for the presence of a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) office here. Considering the US’s own longstanding interest in extraditing Dataram going all the way back to 2007, one is left to wonder exactly what is being or has been accomplished by the DEA since it was set up here. Are there issues of trust? Can it function effectively within the environment here?
Dataram’s disappearance raises questions about whether he had high level security help to evade the criminal justice system here. That is a troubling possibility that the Granger administration must take on board. Ordinary folk with a couple of grammes of cannabis continue to face the brunt of incarceration in local jails while those like Dataram who has now finally been convicted here for trafficking and jailed for five years flee the coop with ease.
The law enforcement and the intelligence community must piece together when Dataram made his exit and exactly how. The public also now expects full information on whether Dataram was under authorised surveillance following bail being granted to him and the detailed steps that are being taken by the security services and the government to have him found and returned to face justice here.
