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From the Gulf of Paria to Venezuela’s east­ern coast, a dan­ger­ous trade is flow­ing—one in­volv­ing high-pow­ered firearms and transna­tion­al crime that is lead­ing to po­lit­i­cal ten­sion.

Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties said they have in­ter­cept­ed two il­le­gal gun ship­ments al­leged­ly smug­gled from Trinidad and To­ba­go, part of what they de­scribe as a broad­er desta­bil­i­sa­tion plot in­volv­ing Colom­bian para­mil­i­taries and po­lit­i­cal op­er­a­tives.

At the cen­tre of the con­tro­ver­sy is a man iden­ti­fied as Gis Kendel Jheron, re­port­ed­ly a T&T na­tion­al.