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| Ricardo ‘Fatman’ Rodrigues |
Drug trafficking organizations based in Guyana are beginning to use neighbouring Suriname as a major distribution hub. The cocaine is smuggled into Guyana and then transported to Suriname for safekeeping and distribution. Approximately 352kg of cocaine was seized in 2011. As a result of these seizures,Guyanese authorities have case spending prosecution against 16 mid-level and senior drug traffickers. As a matter of policy, the Government of Guyana does not encourage or facilitate the illicit production or distribution of narcotics .News media, however, report on allegations of corruption; some reports have implicated police personally in stealing drugs from seizures, while others point to high government officials who are not investigated and thus go unpunished.
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| 'Roger' Khan (centre) |
Guyana Players
Ricardo ‘Fatman’ Rodrigues, was executed by a five-man squad in broad daylight on a quiet Monday afternoon on 15th October in Georgetown. He had been released on bail following his arrest over the discovery of an arms cache in the Rupununi that contained ten automatic and assault rifles, hand grenades, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and other items. Rodrigues is a close associate of Guyanese Shaheed 'Roger' Khan who has been jailed in the United States for cocaine trafficking.
Before he was caught in neighbouring Suriname, Khan had publicly claimed responsibility for preventing the then Bharrat Jagdeo administration from being toppled by heavily armed gangs and sections of the security forces. Khan has been repeatedly singled out by the political opposition as being a key-player in alleged state-sponsored death squads that had hunted armed gangs. Government Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy has vehemently denied authorising the sale of sophisticated mobile phone tapping and user-location equipment that had been found in Khan's possession. At the time of Khan's arrest, wire tapped recordings of voices purportedly of then Police Commissioner, Winston Felix and Peoples National Congress executive member, Basil Williams had surfaced and used by the government to justify its claim that there had been political-security links in the crime-spree.
Jean Le Blanc, a Canadian from Montreal with mob ties, who was shot at the same time as Rodrigues, died mysteriously in hospital on 26th October. Marlon ‘Trini” Osbourne, Rodrigues’s personal bodyguard, was executed on 31st October in broad daylight in the quiet ward of Queenstown, Georgetown by a squad of gunmen.
The link between narco-trafficking and gun-running is clear. It is evident also, that drugs and guns have been contributing to murders during the People’s Progressive Party Civic’s 20-year administration. The Guyana Police Force recorded 114 murders so far in 2012. Nine of these were ‘executions’ which might have been related to the narcotics trade. Armed robberies, which increased by 15 per cent to 854 – a rate of nearly three per day – are partly the result of more fire power on the street which accompanies drug-running.
The United States is seeking Barry Dataram for cocaine smuggling offences, but has been unable to secure his provisional arrest because the extradition treaty between Guyana and the US contains a proviso which allows the US to extradite to third countries. Dataram came up on the radar after the kidnapping of his wife, Sheleza, and their three-year-old daughter in December 2007 by two Venezuelans, one of whom was later shot dead in a confrontation with the police. Dataram was then arrested and had been detained by police beyond the 72 hours that the law allows a person to be held in custody before being charged. His lawyers subsequently approached the court with a habeas corpus writ but police asked for an extension to conclude their investigation into the kidnapping, which they said was drug-related.
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| Barry Dataram |
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| Marlon ‘Trini” Osbourne |
The country’s two existing counter-narcotics agencies “ Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit and Police Narcotics Branch – have never been provided with the surveillance aircraft, river and coastal patrol boats, all-terrain vehicles and trained personnel needed to secure the country’s main international transit points, coasts and borders. They seem incapable of identifying, much less investigating, the major drug cartels that have the ability to keep the trade going.
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| Vic Puran and Barry |
A ex police commissioner was also mentioned in a confidential US embassy report by the DEA . Greene’s name has appeared repeatedly in reports from various USG agencies “U.S. law enforcement has reliable reports from multiple sources that Henry Greene has benefited from, and continues to benefit from, the proceeds of drug trafficking.”
A month before Vic's ill fated car accident ex police chief Green also had a car accident which turned out to be fatal.
In 2006 the Agriculture Minister Satyadeo Sawh was assassined in a home invasion robbery, according to a leaked US embassy report Sawh was said to be close with a certain Salim Azeez, a suspected money launderer and alien smuggler. Azeez financed a fish farm, Newline Aqua Farm, which appears to be a money laundering operation. Azeez was previously arrested with several Guyanese and U.S. passports but later was acquitted of wrongdoing.
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| Salim,Tameka and Fat Boy |
The burnt-out aircraft ‘discovered’ on the airstrip at Bartica in December 1998; of another burnt-out aircraft ‘discovered’ at Mabura Hill in July 2000; of the abandoned aircraft at Kwapau airstrip in March 2005 and of the discovery of a burn-out aeroplane on an illegal airstrip at Wanatoba, 130 km upriver from Orealla on the Corentyne River, in December 2007.
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| Henry Greene |