Shal­iza Has­sanali

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

From the Gulf of Paria to Venezuela’s east­ern coast, a dan­ger­ous trade is flow­ing—one in­volv­ing high-pow­ered firearms and transna­tion­al crime that is lead­ing to po­lit­i­cal ten­sion.

Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties said they have in­ter­cept­ed two il­le­gal gun ship­ments al­leged­ly smug­gled from Trinidad and To­ba­go, part of what they de­scribe as a broad­er desta­bil­i­sa­tion plot in­volv­ing Colom­bian para­mil­i­taries and po­lit­i­cal op­er­a­tives.

At the cen­tre of the con­tro­ver­sy is a man iden­ti­fied as Gis Kendel Jheron, re­port­ed­ly a T&T na­tion­al.

Ac­cord­ing to Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, Jheron was ar­rest­ed along­side Colom­bian para­mil­i­taries while at­tempt­ing to en­ter Venezuela with weapons.

“We’re not say­ing what they were go­ing to do with the weapons so as not to get in­to the de­tails,” Ca­bel­lo said, “but be­hind this is the nar­co-para­mil­i­tary and the Op­po­si­tion in Venezuela, which has no scru­ples and is ca­pa­ble of al­ly­ing it­self with any­one to gain pow­er in the coun­try, but they haven’t been able to and nev­er will be able to.”

Ca­bel­lo, speak­ing live on Venezue­lan state tele­vi­sion Vene­zolana de Tele­visión’s (VTV) pro­gramme Con El Ma­zo Dan­do, trans­mit­ted on June 5, vowed to find the gangs “wher­ev­er they are,” a de­c­la­ra­tion that trig­gered a strong re­sponse from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who threat­ened to use lethal force against any Venezue­lan ves­sel en­ter­ing T&T wa­ters.

On Wednes­day, res­i­dents of a fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty in south Trinidad said Jheron was Trinida­di­an. While some lo­cals claimed that Jheron had con­nec­tions in both Venezuela and T&T and was known to fa­cil­i­tate cer­tain op­er­a­tions in the Oth­a­heite Bay, oth­ers in­sist­ed he was no king­pin. They al­so said he was known by sev­er­al names.

Jheron is cur­rent­ly in po­lice cus­tody in Venezuela as au­thor­i­ties on both sides of the Gulf con­tin­ue in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

On Fri­day, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers, in pro­vid­ing an up­date on the mat­ter, said they re­ceived cor­re­spon­dence from the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties on Wednes­day stat­ing that they are “pay­ing close at­ten­tion to it” and “treat­ing it with ur­gent pri­or­i­ty”.

Asked if the T&T Gov­ern­ment has been able to iden­ti­fy the in­di­vid­ual ar­rest­ed, Sobers said he “took note” of what was re­cent­ly re­port­ed in the T&T Guardian but they are un­able to “au­then­ti­cate that” as ver­i­fi­ca­tion needs to come through the diplo­mat­ic chan­nels.

Sobers in­sist­ed there was no hos­til­i­ty be­tween the two coun­tries.

“We have a very peace­ful, trans­par­ent and ex­treme­ly close re­la­tion­ship.”

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der was al­so asked if he had any in­for­ma­tion of na­tion­als mov­ing guns to Venezuela, he said no.

“You should know this, too. Peo­ple do their own thing, they leave this coun­try and some we can’t even find them for years. And the next thing, they get caught up in the mix.”

Tar­get: Su­cre State

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira, who has stud­ied Venezuela’s drug trade ex­ten­sive­ly across sev­er­al pub­lished works, be­lieves these were not ran­dom seizures but part of a cal­cu­lat­ed pipeline—one that runs from US gun mar­kets through T&T’s porous bor­ders and in­to the hands of Colom­bia’s crim­i­nal elite.

The guns ar­rive through le­gal and il­le­gal ports from US states such as Bal­ti­more, Flori­da, Geor­gia, Texas, and New York.

Video footage aired on tele­vi­sion fol­low­ing Jheron’s ar­rest showed that most of the seized firearms were AR-15s.

“That is how the Colom­bian dons arm their gang­land in Venezuela … with AR-15s,” Figueira added.

He be­lieves the arms caches were des­tined for Su­cre State to aid Colom­bian-led op­er­a­tions tar­get­ing Venezuela’s most vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

Colom­bian car­tels, he said, are sourc­ing high-pow­ered Amer­i­can firearms through T&T to be tak­en to Venezuela, with the help of lo­cal smug­glers.

While Colom­bian gun smug­glers sell AR-15s, Figueira said the black mar­ket price in the Span­ish-speak­ing coun­try was way too ex­pen­sive.

Figueira said that when the US be­came the main sup­pli­er of cheap­er guns to the Caribbean in 2014, Colom­bian king­pins had to turn to T&T for their il­le­gal sup­ply.

Colom­bia was pushed out of the gun mar­ket, he said.

“Why must we give you (Colom­bians) US$12,000 ($80,000TT) for an AR-15 when you could get one for $25,000 to $30,000 here from Flori­da?”

In the US, an AR-15 can be bought for as lit­tle as US$630. On T&T’s black mar­ket, it sells for around US$6,000.

Since the ear­ly 1960s, Figueira not­ed, Colom­bians have been present in T&T. “This has al­ways been Colom­bian ter­ri­to­ry to run their dope.”

He said op­er­a­tives based in Trinidad even­tu­al­ly teamed up with lo­cal gangs to trans­port weapons by boat in­to Venezuela.

Grave threat to our sta­bil­i­ty

Figueira said the Colom­bian car­tel’s agen­da goes be­yond prof­it—it’s about dom­i­na­tion through ter­ror. 

“The Colom­bians in­sist on a po­lit­i­cal vi­sion for their il­lic­it trades,” Figueira said.

In Venezuela, gangs al­leged­ly tied to these car­tels have used such weapons to desta­bilise com­mu­ni­ties, as­sas­si­nate po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists, block roads, and at­tack in­fra­struc­ture.

“So they ren­der the spaces in which they op­er­ate un­govern­able, which they take over,” he said.

“They be­lieve that in any coun­try where they are op­er­at­ing, they must wield po­lit­i­cal pow­er, and that means you go to any ex­tent to get po­lit­i­cal pow­er, even if it means turn­ing the coun­try in­to chaos.”

He warned that the re­al pow­er lies off­shore, with Colom­bian king­pins now re­sid­ing in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, be­yond the reach of au­thor­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to Figueira, the re­cent arms seizure was like­ly bound for Su­cre State to be dis­trib­uted to Venezue­lans work­ing for the Colom­bian mafia.

He sus­pects the sec­ond ship­ment was in­tend­ed to “make war on the poor peo­ple in Venezuela”.

“Trinidad is be­ing sucked in­to a geopo­lit­i­cal hur­ri­cane,” he warned.

“As long as T&T con­tin­ues to sup­ply Colom­bians with guns, they will be a grave threat to our sta­bil­i­ty. What stops them one morn­ing from de­cid­ing the time has come to desta­bilise T&T?”

A man who works with fish­er­men in the Gulf of Paria said Venezuela’s claims “don’t make sense un­less the CIA or DEA ver­i­fies it”. He sug­gest­ed an­oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty: that the Venezue­lan State could fab­ri­cate a coup to shift blame.

But Figueira said, “Dis­cred­it­ing Ca­bel­lo makes no sense be­cause this is not the first at­tempt to desta­bilise Venezuela. It’s a long line of at­tempts. This is noth­ing new.”

T&T’s vul­ner­a­ble ge­og­ra­phy

Based on the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) analy­sis in 2021, there were an es­ti­mat­ed 11,043 il­le­gal firearms in cir­cu­la­tion in T&T, up from 9,389 in 2019. This grow­ing ar­se­nal con­tin­ues to fu­el vi­o­lent crime and in­stil fear in T&T.

In Feb­ru­ary, res­i­dents in Tabaquite were left trau­ma­tised af­ter a gang mur­dered Matthew Chan­cel­lor and car­ried out three armed rob­beries in one night. In 2022, a spike in vi­o­lence in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, led res­i­dents to im­pose a self-cur­few. And in Bel­mont, the mur­ders of broth­ers Andy and Ray­mond Weekes sparked fresh pleas for po­lice ac­tion. There have been nu­mer­ous oth­er gun-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents through­out the coun­try.

A 2023/2024 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee re­port on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty not­ed T&T’s his­tor­i­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble po­si­tion as a tran­ship­ment point for il­lic­it weapons. Da­ta from the SSA showed 123 il­le­gal ports, 66 of which are used for firearms traf­fick­ing.

Le­gal and il­le­gal ports

Four le­gal ports are al­so sus­pect­ed en­try points: Care­nage, Ch­aguara­mas (Piers 1 and 2), and Point Lisas.

In­for­mal coastal en­try points were al­so flagged, in­clud­ing:

Ica­cos

Erin

Puer­to Grande

Pa­lo Seco Bay

Point Fortin

Point Ligoure

La Brea

Cou­va

Can­gre­jos

La Vache

Chupra to To­co

Buc­coo to Crown Point

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) re­port­ed find­ing il­le­gal firearms in sev­er­al le­git­i­mate fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing Shed 10 at the Port-of-Spain Port, Med­way Ware­house in Freeport, and Plipde­co’s ware­house in Cou­va.

More than 1,000 il­le­gal firearms re­port­ed­ly en­ter T&T each year. 

Their black-mar­ket val­ue is es­ti­mat­ed at $56.2 mil­lion to $144.4 mil­lion, based on an av­er­age street price of $17,429 per gun.

Il­le­gal gun trade val­u­a­tions by year:

2017: $100 mil­lion

2019: $119 mil­lion

2021: $144 mil­lion

Due to re­source con­straints, on­ly 3,998 of the 23,000 con­tain­ers en­ter­ing T&T be­tween Jan­u­ary and Au­gust 2022 were in­spect­ed.

The com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed:

* Cre­at­ing a Bor­der Pro­tec­tion and Se­cu­ri­ty Agency

* Strength­en­ing the CED with staffing and up­grad­ed tech­nol­o­gy

* Ex­pand­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port for po­lice-led projects

* En­hanc­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with the CARI­COM IM­PACS Crime Gun In­tel­li­gence Unit (launched in March 2023 with US sup­port)

Re­gion­al risk and diplo­mat­ic re­sponse

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Dr Garvin Heer­ah de­scribed Ca­bel­lo’s al­le­ga­tions as deeply con­cern­ing, even with­out pub­licly shared ev­i­dence. “They raise sig­nif­i­cant con­cern not on­ly from a bi­lat­er­al diplo­mat­ic per­spec­tive but al­so in the wider con­text of re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime,” he said.

Heer­ah stressed that T&T has no state-sanc­tioned rea­son or ca­pac­i­ty to sup­ply arms to Venezuela or any for­eign ac­tor. 

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that T&T may be ex­ploit­ed as a tran­sit point for the il­lic­it trade of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW).

He called for the mo­bil­i­sa­tion of na­tion­al in­tel­li­gence agen­cies and en­hanced col­lab­o­ra­tion with CARI­COM IM­PACS, In­ter­pol, and the DEA.

“A firm but re­spect­ful re­quest for ev­i­dence shar­ing and joint ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cis­es should be pre­sent­ed to Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties,” Heer­ah ad­vised. “Si­lence or de­lay risks deep­en­ing mis­trust and wors­en­ing diplo­mat­ic ties.”

He al­so urged au­dits of all ports of en­try and arms traf­fick­ing chan­nels. “If there is any mer­it to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that il­le­gal arms were traf­ficked through or from T&T, swift law en­force­ment ac­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty must fol­low.”

Even if po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed or mis­in­formed, Venezuela’s ac­cu­sa­tions could still harm T&T’s glob­al stand­ing and in­vite sanc­tions, he warned.

“A re­gion­al diplo­mat­ic re­sponse, per­haps via Cari­com, should be con­sid­ered to de-es­ca­late ten­sions and pro­mote col­lab­o­ra­tion.”

He con­clud­ed that the re­al threat is transna­tion­al crime, not na­tion­al gov­ern­ments. 

“Let this mo­ment be a wake-up call—not just about man­ag­ing ex­ter­nal re­la­tions—but about clos­ing the in­ter­nal gaps that al­low for the traf­fick­ing of arms, peo­ple, and nar­cotics across our bor­ders.”

Han­dled wise­ly, Heer­ah said, this cri­sis could be­come a turn­ing point for stronger bi­lat­er­al se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion and the sta­bil­i­sa­tion of T&T’s vul­ner­a­ble bor­der re­gions.