Narcotics Arms Trafficking, Corruption and Governance in the Caribbean
| Date | 01 February 1997 |
| Pages | 138-147 |
| Published date | 01 February 1997 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb027130 |
| Author | Ivelaw L. Griffith |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance |
Journal of Money Laundering Control — Vol. 1 No. 2
Narcotics Arms Trafficking, Corruption and
Governance in the Caribbean
Ivelaw L. Griffith
There are four main narcotics operations in the
Caribbean: drug production; the consumption and
abuse of drugs; drug trafficking; and money laun-
dering. These have numerous effects, including
arms trafficking, corruption, crime, and an adverse
impact on tourism, an economic mainstay of
several Caribbean nations. These operations and
effects have implications for several aspects of
political, socio-economic, and security conduct in
the region, including the area of governance. This
article examines some of the connections involving
arms trafficking, corruption and governance.
There are direct linkages among these three
aspects of the narcotics phenomenon: because of
its illegality, arms trafficking necessitates corrup-
tion, and they both undermine good governance.
But arms trafficking is not the only reason corrup-
tion exists. Consequently, there is corruption in
places where there is no evidence of arms traffick-
ing. Further, partly because of the proscription
against drug production, consumption abuse,
traf-
ficking and money laundering, corruption is a
crucial facilitator of these. Because two or more of
these operations exist simultaneously in some
places, corruption often involves interlocking net-
works to facilitate production, consumption, and
trafficking, money laundering and trafficking, pro-
duction, trafficking, and arms smuggling, or other
such combinations.
ARMS TRAFFICKING
The ownership and use of weapons and ammuni-
tion are considered vital to the successful prosecu-
tion of some drug operations, especially
production and trafficking. Weapons and ammuni-
tion are used for both symbolic and substantive
purposes, notably for: protection of drugs and drug
operatives; execution of tasks that facilitate the
pursuit of the interests of producers, dealers or
traffickers, such as robbery and narcoterrorism;
intimidation of clients as well as fellow operators;
and deterrence against deviance or disloyalty by
fellow operators.
Arms trafficking in the Caribbean has been both
intra-regional and extra-regional. In the former
case it has facilitated some or all of the above
mentioned functions by Caribbean drug produ-
cers,
traffickers and users. The disastrous conse-
quences of the drugs-weapons connection has
been felt in Puerto Rico, St Kitts-Nevis, Guyana,
the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago,
and elsewhere in the region. But perhaps of all
places, Jamaica and Puerto Rico provide the most
startling evidence of those consequences, with high
rates of drug-related homicides and drug gang
activities. Indeed, as regards Jamaica, a 1989 state-
ment still captures the reality today: 'Jamaica over
the past few years has experienced, through an
upsurge in violent crime, the effects of
a
combina-
tion of drugs and money in the form of the naked
display of power, through the use of arms.'1 This
is certainly also true of Puerto Rico.
In the case of extra-regional trafficking, the
Caribbean is used to facilitate the acquisition of
weapons by drugs operators based in South
America. Both intra-regional and extra-regional
trafficking have serious security consequences,
manifest as well as latent ones. But extra-regional
trafficking is relatively more dangerous, partly
because of the larger quantities of weapons and
funds involved, and the notoriety and viciousness
of some of the individuals and organisations
behind it. One gets a sense of this by looking at a
few of the dramatic cases.
In one case, reported in the Sunday Gleaner, a
10-ton shipment of arms, with an estimated value
of J$8m, arrived in Jamaica on 22nd December,
1988 on the way to Colombia. The Sunday
Gleaner
reported that the shipment, from Heckler and
Koch of then West Germany, included 1,000 G3A3
automatic assault rifles, 250 HK21 machine guns,
ten 60-millimetre commando mortars, and 600
rounds of high explosive 60-millimetre mortar
shells.
The planned trafficking operation involved
Germans, Englishmen, Panamanians, Colombians
and Jamaicans. Interrogation of some of the con-
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