HOW COLOMBIAN NARCO CARTELS AND THE MAFIA HAVE THE FORMER NETHERLANDS ANTILLES IN THEIR GRIP.

Image: Above Marcel Loor a former highly placed top Government functionary on Sint Maarten, who was at one time Police Commissioner of Sint Maarten, Head of the Immigration Department and Head of the Coast Guard. He was arrested in Paris France for Cocaine trafficking , on Thursday 18^th 2013. Loor was charged with laundering money between January 1, 2001 and December 27, 2006. The charge mentions an amount of $115,600 and/or an amount of $332,275, stemming from sixty cash deposits at the Standard Trust Company for Loor’s Nevis-based offshore company Santana. (From confidential sources within the police department in the former Netherlands Antilles and the Dutch Marines. Dutch author John van den Heuvel has shown that, Loor is the rule and not an exception.

The case of Marcel Loor on Sint Maarten is a glaring example of such, Loor was once head of the Immigration  Department at one time he headed the Coast Guard, Loor was also the Police Commissioner on Sint Maarten clearly a “top-person” in the police and intelligence apparatus on the island and regionally.  The appeals court ruled in 2010 it was proven that Loor laundered money during a considerable short period: in the month of June, 2006. The Supreme Court has now confirmed this ruling. During that month, Charlene Craig (Loor’s girlfriend) made 14 cash deposits into her multiplier account at the RBTT bank – mostly for $8,000 or $9,000 a piece. The grand total of $115,000 was later transferred to an account in Loor’s name. Investigators also found receipts for 14 cash deposits at the Standard Trust Company for $118,000. All but one of these deposits remained below the MOT reporting ceiling of $10,000. But on three different days, Loor deposited much larger amounts – $27,000, $35,700 and $24,000. Standard Trust split these deposits neatly in portions under the $10,000-ceiling. This same person is at present the CEO and owner of a security company that is being prominently advertised free of charge on LinkedIn and Facebook. Only in the Caribbean can a convicted criminal head a “security     -      ‘company”. The book (Sneeuw over Curacao, Snow over Curacao), details the “Antillean”, problem in a microscopic, methodical manner. I will use evidence and data gathered by the writer John van den Heuvel detailing the true nature of the criminal milieu on all the islands in the Antilles and specifically Curacao, Sint Maarten and Aruba. Van Den Heuvel focuses on the mid eighties, to the 1990’s and early 2002, those years set the pace and tone for the present criminal hierarchy in the islands at present, here I will detail how the present situation is one created by drug-gangs and why the former “Antilles”, are veritable “narco states”.  In chapter three of his book van den Heuvel provides proof, from formerly classified documents, a government report, police personnel and lawyers and judges, of devastating proportions yet sadly it is only “the tip of the iceberg”, according to police personnel on the island of Curacao. The unravelling of an epic case of extreme corruption and criminality within the police force of the former Netherlands Antilles, played out on the 13^th of February 1999, on a secluded beach in Boka Cacho Curacao. On the date previously mentioned a man taking a stroll on the beach found two dead Venezuelan’s along a deserted foot path. A man testified that he saw three police men Poekie A., Remy R, and Puis R, murder the Venezuelans. Herman K. aka Herman Sito testified that the afore mentioned police officers and himself were, an organized crime team that specialized in: extortion, armed robberies, arson, blackmail and paid assassinations. The three were called “los tres cabezas de los muertes”, the three death skulls. The commission Integrity Investigation Customs in a confidential report that was leaked, by the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. The commission determined that throughout the Netherlands Antilles’ law enforcement apparatus, in particular the Customs agency of Bonaire a majority of customs officers performed paid services for drugs cartels. A major portion of customs officers on all islands and some 40 out of 179 were on a so called “black list”, and were involved in drug dealing, and money laundering. According to the research in the book that van den Heuvel wrote, Aruba is being used by the Italian mafia as a “white wash paradise”, Rudy Croes Minister of Justice in the 1990’s told van den Heuvel that: “We have become a Cocaine trampoline; soon we will be totally overtaken by drugs here on Aruba”. As per Croes and many “top-people”, in the Antillean and Aruban intelligence and political hierarchy the Royal Dutch Marines are, on vacation on the islands and their presence here is not a hindrance to the drugs business out of Venezuela and Colombia, on the contrary they too are being used to facilitate the transport of drugs from the Antilles to Europe. Van den Heuvel publicised, the well known fact that chiefs of the Turkish mafia are fully active on Sint Maarten and the Russian mafia, is a well established organisation resident on Sint Maarten, their “official” mode of business on the island? The gambling industry of course in the form of “Casinos”, the perfect whitewash instrument. Van den Heuvel wrote that in the 1990’s Sint Maarten along with Aruba became the sites of the most important money laundering operations of la Cosa Nostra. He also exposed to the “outer world”, an open secret on Sint Maarten, how the then ruling political boss, Claude Wathey used the island for over forty years as his personal political fiefdom. Wathey wanted to create a “Tropical Paradise”, for American tourists. At the beginning of the eighties, a certain Rosario Spadaro, (Don Saro), and another famous Cosa Nostra alumni Eddie Cellini established themselves in the dry goods sector and hotel industry on Sint Maarten. The “genius”, behind the establishment of the Sicilian mafia on Sint Maarten was Claude Wathey and his sons and a former lieutenant/lawyer Ralph Richardson. According to van den Heuvel and his reports are highly accurate, since it was no secret, that Spadaro was a highly connected individual within the Sicilian mafia. The airport expansion project, the expansion of the Port and the Ebenezer Housing Project, were all projects that Spadaro i.e. (the Sicilian mafia), were involved in. Van den Heuvel wrote that: “In 2001 I visited Colombia along with my colleague Joost de Haas we met with Pablo Escobar’s brother Roberto. Roberto Escobar told us about his cooperation with Dutch criminals and said that he had highly placed contacts on Sint Maarten”. Van den Heuvel reported that two highly placed Colombian cartel operatives were based on Sint Maarten and Aruba respectively, and that Envigado the Colombian from the same village as Pablo Escobar, was the top-man on Sint Maarten. A certain Aruban E van den B, was fingered as the contact person of the Medillin cartel in Phillipsburg in the 1990’s when van den Heuvels book was published. From as early as 1984 evidence emerged, during an undercover investigation, involving the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the Dutch Centrale Recherche Informatie Dienst (CRI) also known in English as the Central Investigative Information Service (CIIS), that according to Marcel Hansen and Hans Buddingh in their Dutch title book “De Danser” (The Dancer). In “The Dancer”, the authors revealed how, as far back as 1984 Colombian narco-kingpins were presiding in meetings on Aruba, concerning metric ton cocaine transports to Europe and America. Through a police informant, named Dick Stotijn, the detective agency gained a wealth of information in the person of a CRI liaison officer, who was stationed on Curacao, the DEA also benefitted from the above mentioned information. The spy revealed how the elite in the Colombian narco-hierarchy, had infiltrated all of the Antillean islands, he also brought to light the complicity of Antillean police officers in the cocaine transport business throughout the islands, and in particular the business of transport of cocaine to North America and Europe. The DEA made a top secret report dated 12^th January 1985, concerning the aforementioned. In the Dutch translation of the report (translated by the Dutch CRI), the names of all of the police officers from the islands who were involved in the cocaine business were listed. The German Bundes Kriminal Amt (BKA), at the time had confidential information concerning the Antillean police force’ involvement in the cocaine business. The Germans sent a top secret report to the CRI offices in The Hague Netherlands detailing the involvement of numerous Antillean police officers in the narco industry in the region. The information given in this entire article is only the tip of the iceberg, in any island in the former Netherlands Antilles it is possible, to drive around in most districts and see former police officers and many currently serving as police officers, living in lavish homes, that they simply cannot afford on a police man’s salary. It is inconceivable that the Dutch government while touting, transparency and good governance has yet to move decisively in rooting out, clear above-board corruption from within the society, particularly within the police force in all of the islands of the former Netherlands Antilles.     

The Daily Herald reported on Monday, September 23, 2013: Dutch newspaper suggests US gunning for Bouterse. Dutch Newspaper:  NRC Handelsblad. The liberal newspaper reported that it had received transcripts, of phone conversations between Bouterse and convicted Guyanese drug kingpin Roger Khan and that the two were part of an extensive criminal network. Desi Bouterse the Surinamese President is the father of Dino Bouterse who was arrested in Panama on the 29^th of August 2013 then turned over to US authorities who are charging him with conspiracy to import Cocaine into the United States. Dino Bouterse and his father Desi Bouterse are both named by US intelligence sources as being linked as part of a drug network to Roger Khan. Khan who was arrested on June 2006 in Paramaribo (capital of Suriname), was considered Guyana’s most powerful drug kingpin. Khan was arrested in a sting operation that netted 213 kilos of cocaine. He was also wanted in his native Guyana for questioning in the theft of 33 AK-47 rifles from the Guyana Defense Force. According to US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, “there were social and operational links”, between Khan and Bouterse. Derek Maltz a DEA special agent said: “Dino Bouterse is a significant drug trafficker, who is in possession of dangerous weapons. Bouterse has a history of drugs and weapons trafficking having been convicted of similar crimes in Suriname in 2005. Thanks to our vast network of agents and informants around the world, DEA and our partners disrupted this drug trafficking conspiracy and he will now face “justice” in the United States”. To date Dino Bouterse has been slapped with a new charge of terrorism, on Friday 8^th 2013, in New York DA Preet Bharara read the charges against Bouterse: “Today we add a new charge of attempting to support Hezbollah, to Dino Bouterse’s alleged connection to a cocaine-smuggling conspiracy”. The indictment, though a fabrication of the US intelligence apparatus is telling, I indicated since 2003 that there is a Hezbollah presence in the region particularly in Curacao and Aruba. The actual terrorist threat in the Caribbean is not from the Middle East, the terror threat comes from within the region. As I have shown in these series of articles, the presence of terrorist groups that are indigenous to the Caribbean, are real and present dangers. The tendency of radical political and pseudo-religious groups, in the Caribbean to display “terrorist” characteristics, is a trait that I have examined exhaustively in the series of articles on this site. Some narco gangs in the region can be called “terrorists”, since they display all the traits and characteristics of a terrorist organization. Dino Bouterse is a potential facilitator of terrorism, given his history and connections in the Surinamese government and the criminal underworld regionally. The US intelligence is on point in targeting person’s like Dino Bouterse regionally, as it is only someone like Bouterse who can truly bring the varying groups together that are essential in building an effective terror network regionally. The evidence thus far examined has shown a pattern of American disruption in the Caribbean and their creation of drug gangs that become even too unwieldy for the Americans to control. The potential for a narco gang challenging a small state in the Caribbean was on display in Jamaica when Christopher “Dudus” Coke was attempting to evade capture from the Jamaican authorities. Coke the “Tivoli Don” was being protected by his political patron Bruce Golding who initially stalled the capture and extradition process of a known drug kingpin Christopher Coke. Golding hired the services of law firm Mannett and Phelps to begin a “process of lobbying” the US government on behalf of the JLP to the benefit of Dudus. Golding claimed that his protection of Coke was a matter of Jamaican national security. The Tivoli neighbourhood long a Shower Posse stronghold and JLP garrison community was Golding’s constituency. When Lester Coke held sway in Tivoli Edward Seaga the American born CIA “stooge” in the Jamaican government was his patron in the same way Bruce Golding another JLP politician was Dudus’ patron. (see:  Initially formed in the 1970s, the Shower Posse—so-named because it rained bullets on rival gangs—developed links  in the United States during the 1980s as it became involved in the drug trade. Christopher Coke’s father, Lester Coke, led the gang in the 1980s, and reportedly was deeply involved in drug and weapons trafficking. Lester Coke was indicted by a U.S. Federal Court in 1988, and was killed in a prison fire in 1992 while he was awaiting extradition to the United States. See Jennifer Lebovich and Trenton Daniel “Jamaican drug king’s father found fertile ground in Miami;” Miami Herald, June 1, 2010.  2 U.S.A. v. Christopher Michael Coke, S15 07 Cr. 971 (Southern District Court of New York 2009).

“After a tumultuous nine months of speculation concerning political complicity in the protection of criminals, the secret hiring by the ruling political party of a US law firm to lobby US officials regarding the extradition request, and the subsequent vociferous demands by the nation for the resignation of the prime minister, the Jamaican government acquiesced (Spaulding, 2010).

 In May 2010, Jamaican security forces launched an attack on Tivoli Gardens, the inner-city community in Kingston, the capital, where Coke resides, in an attempt to find and capture him. The bloody incursion saw state forces battling criminals with high-powered weapons, the entire city of Kingston grinding to a halt for much of a seemingly endless week, and inner-city residents threatening to lay their lives down for Coke. When it was over, more than 70 civilians lay dead, at least one police station was burnt to the ground, and control of Tivoli Gardens, for the first time in many years, was transferred from crime lords back to the state (Jamaica Gleaner, 2010). Security forces, incidentally, would not find Coke until weeks later. In addition to causing the loss of civilian life, the violent confrontation also claimed the lives of members of the security forces”. (Terrorist incursions anywhere usually target security and army personnel and their facilities. In the above precisely those elements were targeted, the use of high powered weapons, that are more powerful and sophisticated than those used by the Jamaican Defense Force and the local police, shows the kind of money available to the narco gangs). 

I think the reader has more than enough credible evidence from reliable sources to see that the narco cartels in the Caribbean are powerful enough to wage successful terror campaigns against regional governments. The past saw some Marxist influenced criminal and lumpen elements specifically in Jamaica and Dominica who described themselves as “dreads” attacking tourist’s and killing them. In 2013 should terrorist’s in the Caribbean decide to target tourist’s in a terror attack, governments, law enforcement and the judiciary regionally are totally unprepared for such an eventuality. I will explore in the following, aspects of the Grenada revolution, and the coup by the Jamaat Al Muslimeen terrorist organization in Trinidad. So called “conspiracy theories”, are now conspiracy fact in the internet age as Wiki Leaks has shown time and again. The acts of terrorism perpetuated on the citizens of other countries by the US CIA and other government agencies are well documented. I will make mention here of the Cubana bombing a CIA sponsored terrorist attack that was known to the CIA, where at least one of the terrorist’s was a CIA asset. Some of the perpetrators lived in the US after the attack as free men, with one of them receiving a presidential pardon from George H.W. Bush. 

Cubana de Aviación flight 455 was the Cuban airliner flight on October 6, 1976 from Barbados to Jamaica that was brought down by a CIA sponsored terrorist attack, killing all 78 passengers onboard the Douglas DC-8 aircraft. Two C-4 (dynamite) time bombs were used in the attack. The evidence pointed to several anti-Castro exiled Cuban terrorist’s with links to the CIA and Venezuelan secret police (DISIP). CIA documents released in 2005 confirmed that the US had “concrete advance intelligence”, of the attack. The four men arrested in the attack were Freddy Lugo, Hernan Ricardo Lozano, and both received twenty year prison terms. Orlando Bosch was acquitted due to “insufficient evidence”; he lived in Miami till his death in 2011. Louis Posada Carriles escaped prison and fled to the US, where he was held on charges of entering the country illegally, he was released by the US authorities on April 19, 2007. Lugo and Lozano were freed in 1993 and still live in Venezuela. As promised I have shown from evidence that the US has been a sponsor of terrorism and terrorist organizations (State sponsored terrorism). The CIA was and still is an organization that traffics in narcotics and destabilizes entire countries and regions, as the case of Jamaica and the entire Caribbean have shown examining CIA documents and statements by former CIA employees.