Maintaining the law here is a farce
~ Says scientific investigation to be published soon ~
PHILIPSBURG--A report titled “Organised Crime and Maintaining the Law in St. Maarten” produced by Dutch Scientific Investigation and Documentation Centre WODC has painted an ugly picture of the overall crime situation in the island territory.
According to the report, there is no cooperation among the almost 30 different judicial services available, there is no sharing of information, no form of registration and information system has been set up, and cooperation with the French side also needs better structuring.
The report based on investigations conducted between 2004 and 2007 focused on St. Maarten as a centre for international drug transport, money laundering, human smuggling and trading in firearms. The investigators drew their conclusions mainly from external reports, because not enough data was available in St. Maarten.
The report will be presented officially to Justice Minister David Dick on October 8. The Minister said the report underlined all the worries he had about maintaining law in St. Maarten.
“I have the same worries as stated in the report. It touches base with problems in all areas such as the police, the Prosecutor’s Office and especially Immigration. The report actually supports my policy,” Minister Dick told The Daily Herald when asked about the report over the weekend.
Dick said he had seen the report, but had yet to study it in depth. He said it would be the topic of debate during the meeting of the Kingdom Ministerial Steering Group scheduled for October 9. He said he would be able to give more specific comments on the report after that meeting.
Based on various international investigations, WODC concluded in the report that organised crime was present in St. Maarten and that the island played an emphatic role in drug smuggling from South America to North America and Europe, while human smuggling and money laundering also took place with great regularity.
According to the WODC report, although there is no direct indication of ties with terrorist organisations, the number of crimes committed with firearms in St. Maarten has gone up based on information after 2006. Before 2006, hardly any information on this issue was available, emphasising the enormous lack of data necessary for proper investigation.
However, the report said there was concrete information about money transfers linking St. Maarten with organisations such as the Jihad and Taliban, and there was information of persons originating from Arab countries living on the island who were connected with extreme radical organisations.
The report stated that, despite changes in the penal code of the Netherlands Antilles and various policy intentions, the fact of the matter remained that these changes and policy intentions hadn’t been reflected at all in St. Maarten.
Similar conclusions were listed in the 2006 Camelia-Römer report on maintaining the law in the Netherlands Antilles. Both WODC and the Camelia-Römer reports were made on the request of former justice minister and current Minister Plenipotentiary in Washington Norberto Ribeiro.
The main reason given for the St. Maarten Police Force not functioning properly was that the police management was not able to lead the organisation. The report stated that the intention of cooperation was there, but it didn’t function in practice due to organisational circumstances, distrust and other political circumstances.
Mainly in the field of money laundering and human smuggling, the necessary checks and balances have not been put in place and experts are needed to investigate dubious transactions taking place.
That the Police Force, the Coast Guard, Customs, and Immigration have been severely understaffed for years has not helped St. Maarten’s cause either.
Registration of confiscated drugs has never been adequate, while “unsettling numbers” of unknown drug transports have taken place through the island. The drug market in St. Maarten is easily accessible because of the lack of control of transport of goods and persons.
As it pertains to money laundering, it has been established that there is no control on financial transactions and international investigation on financial transactions have shown that money smuggling through money couriers has links in St. Maarten.
The many casinos (13), jewellers and stores that sell electronic products in St. Maarten give the impression that the economy is being fuelled with “dirty money.” The casinos have been under suspicion of money laundering and dubious financing from New York and Turkish mafia because, according to the investigators, the island territory does not have enough visitors to justify the existence of all the casinos.
A parallel market of counterfeit goods is obviously present in Philipsburg, but there is not sufficient control on the income of the private sector and several of the stores do not comply with their obligation to report to the Tax Inspectorate, making it almost impossible to determine whether or to what extent the local stores contribute to money laundering.
According to investigators, St. Maarten has been “attractive” as well for illegal trafficking of foreigners. Human smugglers use the island to earn an income with this illegal practice. False documents are easy to obtain, indicating the presence of corrupt civil servants. Human trafficking causes exploitation of humans in the sectors of prostitution and domestic workers primarily from India.
Since the Camelia-Römer report, Dick has produced the Netherlands Antilles Safety Plan, which still hasn’t helped to turn things around for the better. The impression created in the report was that within government there was and still is an apparent unwillingness to really attack the many problems confronted in the judicial chain.
The Dutch Government recently agreed to extend the financing of the Netherlands Antilles Safety Plan by another 18 months, up to the end of 2009.
Dick held sessions with all island territories September 6-7 to draft the “Verbeterplan,” to further develop and optimise the justice chain, and to determine the desired form of cooperation among the islands, specifically after the dismantling of the Netherlands Antilles. These discussions will continue in Curaçao on October 2 and 3.
Constitutional Affairs Commissioner Sarah Wescot-Williams, in the Wednesday September 26 Executive Council press briefing, made an urgent appeal to the Minister to present concrete plans, because until now the only thing he has presented was information.
That the Dutch Government has been increasingly worried about the crime situation in the Netherlands Antilles has been known for years. Not only is the decision to continue financing the Netherlands Antilles Safety Plan proof of that, but also the debates on establishing a Kingdom Law to regulate the Coast Guard of the Netherlands Antilles.
Dutch Minister of Defence Eimert van Middelkoop proposed in the Dutch Parliament extending the legal basis for the Coast Guard and adding “safeguarding of the independence and the defence of the Kingdom” to its tasks.
The Dutch Government believes that extending the basis of the Kingdom Law should be looked at in the perspective of a worldwide increase in crimes related to drug smuggling, human trafficking and terrorism.
