Guyanese claims life threatened
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Guyanese claims life threatened
- after visa sale report made at embassy
Stabroek News
March 23, 2000
Local diamond buyer turned fruit farmer, Joe de Agrella, claims his life had been threatened following a report he made to a senior US Embassy official in connection with a visa sale ring.
de Agrella claims too that it was a complaint which he had "put about in the right circles in Washington DC" which may have sparked the current investigation.
de Agrella told Stabroek News yesterday that following a report aired on the Evening News around March/April last year, he had contacted that newscast's Editor-in-Chief, Adam Harris, about the story and had related what he knew of the involvement of embassy officials in the selling of visas. In that report, the official who has been charged, Thomas Carroll, denied the involvement of any US embassy official in any visa racket.
de Agrella said that following his call to Harris, who reportedly contacted the US embassy, he received a call from the then security chief at the embassy, Max Salazar, seeking confirmation about a report he had received from Harris.
Having confirmed this, de Agrella said, Salazar made an appointment to see him the next morning at the embassy. He said that Salazar turned down his request to be accompanied to the meeting, but when he arrived at the embassy, Salazar informed him that there would be an observer at the interview.
de Agrella said that the observer, whom he later discovered was Carroll, refused to disclose his name and Salazar just referred to him as 'Joe'.
He said that at the interview he informed them of a person whom he knew had obtained a ten-year non-immigrant visa as a result of paying a contact in the embassy.
Salazar and Carroll questioned the veracity of his story and said he was doing so out of spite because of a relationship with the woman which had gone sour. He said he had denied that spite had been his motive.
de Agrella said he had been moved to make the report because legitimate applicants with substantial holdings were being denied visas.
Also, he said, the activities of the visa sale operators were driving up the price paid for raw diamonds, making it impossible for legitimate traders, as he then was, to operate.
de Agrella said that within hours of returning home from the appointment with Salazar, he received telephone calls in which the lives of himself and family were threatened. He said that his 12-year-old son took one of the calls, and it was a good thing that he had alerted his family about the calls and how they should react.
de Agrella said he had not reported the threats to the police, but had called Salazar who had asked him to call him if he had any problems. He said that they made an appointment to meet at the embassy and he related to Salazar the threats which had been made against him, but Salazar said that he could not offer him any protection.
de Agrella said he told him that he was seeking protection from the embassy and indicated that he believed that one of the two persons at the meeting had contacted the person who made the calls.
de Agrella said that he told Salazar that if a stop was not put to the racket, he too would become involved in it as it was killing the diamond trade for legitimate dealers. He said Salazar warned him against doing so since if he was caught he would be penalised.
He said he formed the impression that nothing would be done about the information he had supplied at that level and tried contacting US Ambassador, James Mack, but this proved futile. He subsequently told his brother-in-law who resides in Washington DC what he knew and he passed the information to certain people.
de Agrella who said he has been in the diamond trade for the past 37 years claims the operators of the visa sale ring had forced him to turn to fruit farming. He has a 200-acre holding on the Linden-Soesdyke highway of which 120 acres have been planted with oranges and pears. He returned to Guyana in 1983 after living for nine years in the US and was a founding member of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association.
