Contractors quizzed before Guerra’s death

Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

Days be­fore no­to­ri­ous busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra was gunned down last Fri­day, the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau (FIB) of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) sought doc­u­ments from at least four con­trac­tors for al­leged­ly do­ing busi­ness with him.

Guardian Me­dia was told the con­trac­tors the TTPS vis­it­ed ear­ly last week were Moti­lal Ramhit and Sons, Sky­lon Con­struc­tion, Gen­er­al Earth Movers Ltd and V&V Con­tract­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

How­ev­er, the TTPS al­so has sev­er­al oth­er con­trac­tors to in­ter­view as part of their on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Guer­ra.

One con­trac­tor told Guardian Me­dia that the po­lice want­ed bills and de­liv­ery dates, which his com­pa­ny com­plied with. An­oth­er said po­lice al­so sought ac­cess to their records and even re­quest­ed a copy of their bank ac­counts, for which he did not com­ply.

An­oth­er con­trac­tor con­firmed that they did buy ma­te­r­i­al from Guer­ra over the years, but were un­der the im­pres­sion he had a li­cence be­cause his “op­er­a­tion and reach” was ex­ten­sive.

As part of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the TTPS has been in­ter­view­ing con­trac­tors who al­leged­ly pur­chased ag­gre­gate from Guer­ra over the years, even though he has nev­er been in pos­ses­sion of a min­ing li­cence from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.

In 2021, the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion had amend­ed two laws - the State Lands Act and the Min­er­als Act - to not on­ly make it a charge­able of­fence for any­one to pur­chase il­le­gal ag­gre­gate but that they would be dis­qual­i­fied from fu­ture state work.

Guer­ra was the man­ag­er of D Guer­ra Ltd and owned sev­er­al com­pa­nies un­der the D Guer­ra Group of Com­pa­nies.

While his le­git­i­mate base was a re­al es­tate com­pa­ny do­ing hous­ing de­vel­op­ments, for decades, al­le­ga­tions of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing dogged him and there were sev­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions and le­gal mat­ters filed against him.

On Oc­to­ber 11, 2025, Guer­ra and his son, Garvin, along with 16 oth­ers, were charged with un­law­ful pro­cess­ing of ag­gre­gate and grant­ed $50,000 bail each by a jus­tice of the peace. That po­lice op­er­a­tion at Manuel Con­go, Gua­napo, re­sult­ed in the seizure of a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar pro­cess­ing plant, trucks and oth­er heavy ma­chin­ery. The po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion stemmed from this in­ci­dent.

How­ev­er, one month lat­er, in No­vem­ber, Guer­ra was de­tained un­der a de­ten­tion or­der in the pre­vi­ous State of Emer­gency (SoE) for an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge.

At the time, re­ports sug­gest­ed that the threat was linked to il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence and was “a re­al and present dan­ger.”

Re­ports al­so sug­gest­ed that the threat stemmed from Sturge’s re­fusal to in­stall in­di­vid­u­als hand-picked by po­lit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed fig­ures in­to state and con­stituen­cy-lev­el po­si­tions.

On No­vem­ber 20, 2025, Guer­ra was ar­rest­ed un­der the SoE pro­vi­sions by the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit, on al­le­ga­tions that he leads an or­gan­ised crime group in­volved in arms traf­fick­ing, mon­ey laun­der­ing and il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. The or­der said Guer­ra’s group had ac­cess to high-pow­ered firearms and in­tend­ed to es­ca­late at­tacks against ri­val gangs in pub­lic spaces.

Af­ter be­ing de­tained for six weeks, he was re­leased on Jan­u­ary 3

Last Fri­day, Guer­ra was shot sev­er­al times while in his ve­hi­cle out­side his busi­ness place at his North Oropouche Road, San­gre Grande of­fice. He was lat­er pro­nounced dead at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal.

Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to his death are on­go­ing.

Up­dat­ed laws for con­trac­tors in­volved in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing

1 Sec­tion 7(c) of Act No. 10 of 2021 (“Act No.10”), amend­ed the State Lands Act to in­clude a new Sec­tion 30A, which reads as fol­lows:

“30A. A per­son who know­ing­ly trades in or us­es ma­te­r­i­al which is dug, won or re­moved from State Lands in con­tra­ven­tion of this Act is dis­qual­i­fied from en­gag­ing in con­struc­tion projects fund­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.”

2 Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Act No.10 at sec­tion 8(a) (ii) al­so amend­ed the Min­er­als Act to in­crease the fine for any per­son who con­tra­venes sec­tion 45(3) of the Min­er­als Act from five hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars and im­pris­on­ment for a term of five years to a fine of one mil­lion five hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars and im­pris­on­ment for a term of fif­teen years.

3 There­fore, the up­dat­ed sec­tion 45(3) of the Min­er­als Act now reads as fol­lows:-

“(3) A per­son who-

(a) know­ing­ly pur­chas­es any min­er­al from a per­son who is not the hold­er of a li­cence un­der this Act or trade in such min­er­al; or

(b) know­ing­ly makes a false state­ment or fraud­u­lent rep­re­sen­ta­tion in or in con­nec­tion with an ap­pli­ca­tion of a li­cence un­der this Act com­mits an of­fence and shall, on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, be li­able to a fine of one mil­lion, five hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars and im­pris­on­ment for a term of fif­teen years.”