– Diamond businessman says

KARRAN, a Diamond, East Bank Demerara businessman is refuting claims in sections of the media that a bar he operates in the community is a strip club.

The businessman told the Guyana Chronicle that he has been tending bar for years, and it was only last year that he decided to register his as “The Coin Restaurant Bar and Pool Hall”.

He said that his establishment features clean entertainment, and is in no way involved in the trafficking of humans or entertaining strippers.
Karran said that one evening a man showed up at his house asking for girls, and he had to advise him that he was not in that line of business.
Not satisfied with the answer he got, Karran said that the enquirer, a taxi driver, then left and returned claiming that his Karran’s nephew, who is a policeman, sent him to collect some girls.

Karran said that at that point he became suspicious, as he felt he was being prepped for a robbery, so he asked the taxi man to leave his premises.

But to his surprise, Karran said, the taxi man went to his bar where he saw his nephew and promptly told him that his uncle sent him to collect some girls.

Having been briefed by his uncle about the previous visits to his home by an individual fitting the description of the man who was now making the “girls request”, Karran’s nephew, the policeman, asked the taxi man to leave the bar.

The man, however, insisted that he needed some girls, as they were for a group of popular West Demerara men whom he described as drug dealers.

At that point, Karran said, his nephew identified himself to the taxi man as a cop and ordered him to leave the premises.

Subsequently, both he and his nephew began receiving calls on their cellular phones from a man claiming that the taxi driver was alleging that the policeman had assaulted him but that he was willing to settle the matter.

According to Karran, the man at the other end of the line was previously at the centre of a Commission of Inquiry back in 2017.

He told the Guyana Chronicle that the informant told him and his nephew that the taxi driver was about to make a report to the police about the alleged assault and that they operate an illegal strip club.

He said that the taxi driver was willing to settle the entire matter for a fee of $5M, which both he and his nephew refused to entertain, knowing that no such thing as an assault ever happened.

Karran said that the price demand then began to drop until it finally reached $250,000, but both he and his nephew declined to make any such payout, and urged the man to go to the police if he felt that his rights had been violated.

The man has since reportedly approached the Police Office of Professional Responsibility and reported the matter, and Karran’s nephew and a colleague policeman who allegedly owns and operates a strip club were immediately transferred.