1. Arubans Follow the Money Trail. Look at who’s getting
wealthy and you’ve found the ones benefitting from the
Drug trade and money laundering for the Cartels that is
happening right now in the Dutch Antilles.
Colombian drug lords bring terror to Caribbean paradise
LA Times-Washington Post News Service
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - With its palm trees, pastel
gingerbread houses and friendly shopkeepers and
hoteliers, this tropical port long has been a haven for
British and U.S. tourists.
But in recent years, its Caribbean calm has been broken
by a laundry list of violent events: A former U.N.
ambassador disappeared and was presumed dead; police
found the body of the scion of a politically powerful
family stuffed in the trunk of a burned-out car; the
inspector investigating the cases was killed in broad
daylight.

2. Scotland Yard was brought in to try to solve those
mysteries and ease the ensuing political crisis.
But police now believe the three men were all victims of
a growing wave of violence and corruption sparked by
the new presence here of Colombian drug lords.
Confronted with intensified interdiction efforts in the
Bahamas and at the U.S.-Mexico border - and with the
growing distrust of their Mexican allies - Colombian
cartel members have pushed their drug trafficking deep
into the eastern Caribbean, experts say.
About one-third of the cocaine available in the United
States and one-half to two-thirds of that sold in Europe -
hundreds of tons of the drug - is shipped through the tiny
islands of this region, according to U.S. and European law
enforcement officials.

3. Traffickers in small planes and swift boats are following
the necklace of islands from the Colombian coast
eastward to the edge of the Caribbean and then on to
the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, officials say. Once
in U.S. territory, they can move drugs to the mainland
with no fear of customs inspections.
Similarly, former and current Dutch, British and French
colonies are providing the cartels with easy access to
Europe.
The traffickers are inflicting on the region what
Caribbean security expert Ivelaw Griffith calls the
''package'': They are blamed for increases in money
laundering, addiction and corruption so profound that
they threaten to put criminals in charge of the
government and the economy.

4. ''This is probably the best scenario a drug trafficker could
invent,'' said SandorCalvani, who heads the U.N. Drug
Control Program's Caribbean office. ''In the south, big
producing countries.In the north, big consuming
countries. And in between, 1,200 islands organized in 29
countries with four different (government) systems that
do not communicate among themselves and (with) an
infinite number of coves and small beaches.''
Richard Thomas, the top British official in the region,
compares the upsurge in narcotics trafficking today to
the perceived threat of communism that provoked the
U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. ''In the intervening 14
years, that threat has dwindled to almost nothing, but
the threat to stability is now drug trafficking,'' he said.
The number of tourists complaining that they have been
approached by drug dealers in Barbados has quadrupled
over the past six months, Calvani said.

5. The U.S. State Department has reported that there is
extensive money laundering in Aruba, the island closest
to Colombia. Officials also note an increase in both
cocaine and heroin trafficking there. A U.N. internal
document says that 75 percent of all arrests in Aruba are
now drug-related.
Recently published Dutch intelligence reports cite
''worrying indications'' that Aruban democracy is being
eroded by money laundering linked to the drug trade - an
allegation denied by the Aruban government.
As more Caribbean countries try to develop offshore
banking, the threat of drug-related money laundering
will increase, law enforcement authorities warn.
Accustomed to dealing with nothing more threatening
than drunken tourists or rowdy cricket fans, police in
many of the small Caribbean isles are now facing drug-
related crimes that could provide the fodder for
Hollywood mysteries.

6. The day after Dole Chadee, an alleged drug lord in
Trinidad and Tobago, was ordered to stand trial for
murder last year, the key witness against him - who had
been in a protection program for two years - was killed.
Law enforcement officials said the witness' death was
just one of 30 slayings linked to the organization run by
Chadee, who has been convicted of four killings.
But such convictions are a rarity, especially as drug-linked
bribery and intimidation of witnesses, jurors and judges
increase, experts say.
They also note that it can be difficult to bring suspects to
justice because of the ''island mentality'' - the reality that
in small Caribbean communities; the residents all know
one another and distrust outsiders.

7. Here in St. Kitts and Nevis, shaken by the high-profile
killings and the disappearance in 1994, police frustration
is especially high. Officers formally have charged half a
dozen individuals in the killings but have watched as the
cases collapsed in bizarre judicial circumstances.
''We have known who committed the murders for the
past two years,'' asserted Brian Reynolds, the Scotland
Yard inspector called in to clean up St. Kitts' corruption-
riddled, 574-officer police force.
Police have not been able to persuade a local judge to
hear a case against six suspects. The one man who was
put on trial - accused of killing the police inspector - was
freed after two juries deadlocked.
British police have acknowledged that in the killing of the
man found in the car trunk - the deputy prime minister's
son - they were not able to gather evidence as
thoroughly as they would have back home.

8. The car containing Vincent Morris' body - and that of his
girlfriend, Joan Walsh - was found hidden in a field of 7-
foot-tall sugar cane. Police normally would have waited
to move the bodies until a pathologist arrived from
London the next day to examine the scene. But several
hundred islanders were threatening to burn the cane
field, forcing authorities to move the car immediately,
possibly destroying valuable evidence.
Apparently, the crowd had moved upon the field because
the suspects in the pair's killing had been arrested - and
several of them are popular figures in Basseterre, the
capital.
Police never got a chance to lay out their theories and
evidence in Morris' killing because the prosecutor in the
case, who could not be reached for comment, didn't
show up for the trial. Opposition newspapers claim he
was corrupted, and other observers suspect he may have
been intimidated.

9. In the end, the suspects were released.
But some were rearrested last year at the request of U.S.
authorities who wanted them extradited to face drug-
trafficking charges in Miami.
After their arrests, flyers and graffiti appeared all over
town denouncing U.S. imperialism.
Police here were frustrated when a magistrate refused to
extradite the men. That frustration deepened in
February, when a U.S. jury, hearing the same evidence
presented to the magistrate, sent one - who had fled to
Miami and was arrested there - to prison for life.
As for the government, it cannot do anything about the
homicide cases, because ''as in your country, the
judiciary here is independent,'' noted Prime Minister
Denzil Douglas. He also insisted that St. Kitts and Nevis is

10. doing all it can to combat drugs - fully cooperating with
U.S. authorities and tightening money-laundering laws.
Still, its mixed counter-narcotics results show the uphill
battle the small countries of the eastern Caribbean face,
diplomats and law enforcement experts agree.
''This is not the gulf war,'' expert Calvani said, referring to
the U.S.-led alliance's quick defeat of Iraq in 1991. ''It is
not something that we are going to win next year or in
the next five years. ... Now is the time when significant
decisions of strategy will affect what will be the result in
the next five to 10 years.''