Jamaican businessman was lured to Trinidad and kidnapped

(Trinidad Guardian) Four days af­ter Ja­maican busi­ness­man Yohan Chin re­turned to Trinidad & Tobago April 10 he was snatched by kid­nap­pers af­ter be­ing lured to the is­land un­der the pre­tence of seal­ing a new busi­ness deal.

A well-placed in­tel­li­gence source ex­plained that Chin had a med­i­c­i­nal li­cense in Cana­da to dis­trib­ute mar­i­jua­na to peo­ple with ill­ness­es. His fam­i­ly al­so has a chain of busi­ness­es in that coun­try and his home­land Ja­maica.

“We learned that he had been look­ing for ad­di­tion­al land to cul­ti­vate the prod­uct for his busi­ness and some­one called him while he was out the coun­try and told him that they could as­sist him in find­ing land to do this. It’s no co­in­ci­dence that when he re­turned to ne­go­ti­ate the deal that he was tak­en four days lat­er,” said the in­tel­li­gence source.

Well placed im­mi­gra­tion sources in­formed Sun­day Guardian that Chin re­turned to the coun­try aboard a Li­at flight. The source al­so ex­plained that Chin trav­elled reg­u­lar­ly hav­ing left the coun­try at least nine times last year.

Chin, who owns a home at Mon­i­ca Dri­ve, Block Four, Palmiste where he re­sides when in Trinidad, was tak­en by men dressed as po­lice of­fi­cers who stormed his home at five o’clock on the morn­ing of April 14, last month.

A busi­ness part­ner on­ly re­port­ed the kid­nap­ping two days lat­er and was al­so ques­tioned by po­lice twice dur­ing the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The part­ner was spo­ken to by au­thor­i­ties a sec­ond time ear­ly last week, just two days be­fore Chin’s fam­i­ly post­ed an ad in two dai­ly news­pa­pers plead­ing with his cap­tors to con­tact them to “com­plete the ne­go­ti­a­tions” for his safe re­lease.

His cap­tors had de­mand­ed a $US 6 mil­lion ran­som for his re­lease. Chin was al­lowed to speak to a busi­ness part­ner two days af­ter he was snatched and told him to sell his Porsche Panam­era worth close to a mil­lion dol­lars, as well as a Mer­cedes Benz es­ti­mat­ed to be about the same val­ue, and a par­cel of land in Cunu­pia. Chin al­so re­quest­ed that his part­ner or­gan­ise $400,000 in cash and not in­volve the po­lice.

As the weeks have dragged on, the po­lice trail in lo­cat­ing Chin has gone cold. Leads have dried up. In­ves­ti­ga­tors though have their sus­pi­cions about a par­tic­u­lar gang they be­lieve hatched this ne­far­i­ous plan.

The plan to grab Chin, ac­cord­ing to the in­tel­li­gence source, was “well planned and ex­e­cut­ed” and his kid­nap­pers felt the best chance of grab­bing Chin was at his Palmiste home.

In­tel­li­gence and po­lice sources said that the kid­nap­pers who de­mand­ed a US mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar ran­som have been care­ful about how they com­mu­ni­cate. “There has been vir­tu­al dead air on the phones and they’re com­mu­ni­cat­ing through old school meth­ods and they are giv­ing very lit­tle away,” ex­plained a law en­force­ment source as­sist­ing in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

This has posed its chal­lenges for the po­lice who are un­able to say with any cer­tain­ty where Chin might have been kept at one point or the oth­er.

Law en­force­ment sources re­vealed that the par­tic­u­lar gang in­volved in this kid­nap­ping had very close links with mur­dered gang leader and crim­i­nal mas­ter­mind Sel­wyn “Robo­cop” Alex­is who was shot dead out­side his En­ter­prise car wash at Free­dom Street.

This gang, po­lice sources al­so con­firmed, was al­so in­volved in the mur­der of Shel­don Sukhdeo, the broth­er of slain drug deal­er Sheron Sukhdeo.

Fol­low­ing the po­lice in­ter­ro­ga­tion of Chin’s busi­ness part­ner last week, he has since changed his car and gone in­to hid­ing. Chin’s fam­i­ly is liv­ing in hope that at the end of this or­deal he will be re­leased alive.