Coast Guard of­fi­cers have im­pound­ed two fish­ing trawlers, with more than 100,000 gal­lons of diesel fu­el, be­lieved to be tak­ing part in a rack­et in which the fu­el is bought at sub­sidised prices and trad­ed on the high seas for near mar­ket val­ue. Ac­cord­ing to Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of the T&T Coast Guard, Lieu­tenant Kirk Jean-Bap­tiste, the ves­sels were in­ter­cept­ed last Thurs­day morn­ing when a Coast Guard's fast pa­trol craft was on rou­tine pa­trol in the Gulf of Paria. The ves­sels were ob­served to be "low" in the wa­ter as if they were car­ry­ing ex­cess weight. Jean-Bap­tiste said they were board­ed and the crew ques­tioned. It was dis­cov­ered that of the sev­en mem­bers of the two crews, four were not na­tion­als of T&T and were in T&T il­le­gal­ly.

In ad­di­tion, the crew in the trawlers had no bait and there was a strong smell of fu­el. In­ves­ti­ga­tions by the T&T Guardian have re­vealed the men are Guyana na­tion­als and have since been hand­ed over to the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment. The ves­sels were tak­en to Coast Guard head­quar­ters, Staubles Bay, where they re­mained im­pound­ed while in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing. En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, Coast Guard Com­man­der Hi­ram Mo­hammed and the head of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise De­part­ment Fitzroy John lat­er toured the ves­sels. John said the seizure was part of a stepped-up ef­fort to deal with the il­le­gal re­sale of diesel fu­el. He said there were al­ready peo­ple who were be­fore the courts charged with the of­fence.

He added: "This is an on­go­ing bat­tle. We have in­creased the fight as the Gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed the loss could be as high as $1.5 bil­lion."

Of­fi­cers from Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) al­so were called in to take sam­ples of the fu­el to con­firm it was diesel and to en­sure a case could be built to be tak­en to court. Fol­low­ing the tour of the ves­sels, the Ram­nar­ine said it ap­peared the trawlers had been spe­cial­ly con­fig­ured to car­ry the diesel.

He added: "It ap­pears to me that they would have had to do a lot of work to en­sure that the ves­sels were con­fig­ured this way and I am sure that will be part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions." The min­is­ter said his min­istry had tak­en both ad­min­is­tra­tive mea­sures to re­duce the leak­age of diesel sub­si­dies from the sys­tem and he was par­tic­u­lar­ly hap­py with the Coast Guard tak­ing ac­tion and in­ter­cept­ing the ves­sels.

Ram­nar­ine added: "The is­sue of the fu­el sub­sidy is very im­por­tant to this Gov­ern­ment be­cause, as you know, the sub­sidy is well over $4 bil­lion this year and it is cost­ing the coun­try a lot of mon­ey and so we have put in place ad­min­is­tra­tive mea­sures to deal with the is­sue." Ram­nar­ine did not elab­o­rate on the ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sues but the T&T Guardian has learnt that in study­ing the prob­lem the min­istry found that al­most the same amount of diesel was be­ing sold as is gaso­line and in so do­ing it recog­nised there had to be a ma­jor dis­crep­an­cy. In­ves­ti­ga­tions al­so showed there were some fish­ing ves­sels buy­ing more diesel than they could pos­si­ble use for fish­ing. Ra­ma­narine promised the crack­down would con­tin­ue to end the rack­et.