Agony over arrest of female member of another prominent business family

PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­[email protected]

One day af­ter the ar­rest of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve, fol­low­ing po­lice search­es of their West­moor­ings home and the Trinci­ty busi­ness com­plex of his Blue Wa­ters Lim­it­ed, con­cern is be­ing raised at the al­most three-month de­ten­tion of a mem­ber of an­oth­er promi­nent busi­ness fam­i­ly.

In April, Na­tal­ie Har­ford was de­tained by po­lice un­der a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der (PDO).

Har­ford is the daugh­ter of Mario’s Piz­za founder Richard Har­ford, who died in 2024.

In the or­der, signed by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der on April 4, the Gov­ern­ment stat­ed, “The de­tainee, Na­tal­ie Har­ford, has been cred­i­bly iden­ti­fied as a fi­nancier of the Sev­en Gang, which is an Or­gan­ised Crime Group (OCG). The OCG has con­firmed ac­cess to a cache of high-pow­ered firearms and am­mu­ni­tion and is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in dis­putes with ri­vals over ter­ri­to­ry.

“The de­tainee pro­vides cash sup­port to fund the op­er­a­tions of the OCG, which in­tends to im­mi­nent­ly car­ry out reprisal at­tacks on ri­vals in pub­lic spaces us­ing high-pow­ered ri­fles. The de­tainee has al­so is­sued threats to di­rect known mem­bers of the OCG to at­tack her per­son­al tar­gets, in­clud­ing pri­vate cit­i­zens and po­lice of­fi­cers.

“Her de­ten­tion is nec­es­sary to dis­rupt these planned acts of vi­o­lence and to pre­vent the desta­bil­i­sa­tion of pub­lic or­der.”

In the or­der, Alexan­der di­rect­ed that Har­ford “be de­tained at the Women’s Prison, Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca.” How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Har­ford is cur­rent­ly be­ing held at a fa­cil­i­ty in St Ann’s, un­der 24-hour po­lice guard.

Yes­ter­day, though, a source close to the fam­i­ly said there is lit­tle ev­i­dence to sup­port the de­ten­tion, adding the fam­i­ly has been ex­plor­ing le­gal mea­sures to se­cure her free­dom.

The source said Har­ford, who takes med­ica­tion for a men­tal health con­di­tion, had not tak­en her fa­ther’s pass­ing last year well. The source al­so said while she had made pub­lic ut­ter­ances which may have drawn at­ten­tion to her­self, there was lit­tle else that ought to have placed her on the radar of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

The source said the fam­i­ly had ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ed Har­ford to be re­leased with­in three days, but in­stead it has now been al­most three months with­out any in­di­ca­tion as to when she will be re­leased.

A PDO is a le­gal or­der used un­der the pow­ers of a State of Emer­gency to pre­vent con­duct deemed a threat to pub­lic safe­ty. It is not a crim­i­nal charge, nor does it mean a per­son has com­mit­ted a crime. How­ev­er, it is grant­ed when suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence is pre­sent­ed to jus­ti­fy the per­son’s de­ten­tion in or­der to pre­vent an­tic­i­pat­ed harm­ful or dan­ger­ous ac­tions deemed to be detri­men­tal to pub­lic safe­ty.

Hadeed and his wife were de­tained on Wednes­day but that was not done un­der a PDO.

Har­ford’s de­ten­tion came al­most two months be­fore At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie linked the “one per cent” com­mu­ni­ty to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment.

The Har­ford fam­i­ly did not wish to make a pub­lic com­ment on her de­ten­tion when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day.

Ef­forts to reach Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro for com­ment on the is­sue were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.