Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Af­ter hours of con­tin­u­ous search­ing at the Port of Point Lisas, po­lice seized yet an­oth­er 40-foot con­tain­er of high grade Ari­zona mar­i­jua­na on Thurs­day evening. Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cers said the haul had a street val­ue of $7.4 mil­lion. But in a news re­lease late yes­ter­day the Po­lice Ser­vice Pub­lic Af­fairs Unit quot­ed the street val­ue as $30 mil­lion. The re­lease said the val­ue had been con­firmed by an "ex­pert in the field of nar­cotics." But Cus­toms com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Ali­cia Charles, said yes­ter­day Cus­toms and Ex­cise worked out the fig­ure by cal­cu­lat­ing a ki­lo of mar­i­jua­na to be ap­prox­i­mate­ly $8,000. She said the of­fi­cers found 38 bags of mar­i­jua­na weigh­ing more than 921 ki­los.

She said the seizure was part of an on­go­ing joint op­er­a­tion be­tween the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and Pt Lisas Port se­cu­ri­ty which start­ed at the be­gin­ning of the year. Con­tain­ers that came in­to the port which fit­ted a par­tic­u­lar pro­file were sin­gled out for in­spec­tion, she not­ed. A promi­nent busi­ness­man of cen­tral Trinidad, to whom the con­tain­er had been as­signed, was said to be as­sist­ing po­lice with in­quiries up to late yes­ter­day. Thurs­day's seizure was the fourth ma­jor drug bust at the port with­in six months. Sources said it was not the first time a con­tain­er of drugs as­signed to that busi­ness­man was seized by law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said around 5.55 pm a team of of­fi­cers from the Cus­toms and Ex­cise De­part­ment, Plipde­co Po­lice, Crim­i­nal In­tel­li­gence Unit, Drug En­force­ment Agency and the Or­gan­ised Crime, Nar­cotics and Firearms Bu­reau, as well as the Cou­va Po­lice, led by Supt John­ny Abra­ham and ASP Cor­bette, searched the Point Lisas port. It is al­leged that 38 bags of com­pressed mar­i­jua­na, amount­ing to 921 kilo­grammes, were found stashed among frozen chick­en parts. The mar­i­jua­na, be­lieved to have been brought in from the Unit­ed States, was wrapped in plas­tic and tucked in­to white cro­cus bags.

Chair­man of the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed (Plipde­co), Ian Ather­ly, yes­ter­day com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers for their work. He said the team worked all day in the sun and rain to make the bust, which was co-or­di­nat­ed af­ter in­tel­li­gence. "It was a joint ex­er­cise be­tween Plipde­co se­cu­ri­ty, Cus­toms and var­i­ous oth­er agen­cies. They searched 32 con­tain­ers. The con­tain­er was con­signed to a busi­ness per­son in T&T," Ather­ly re­vealed. He added that the con­sign­ment of mar­i­jua­na was be­lieved to have been trans­port­ed from Ja­maica.

"It was stacked in cro­cus bags and was hid­den among frozen chick­en parts, in pack­ages," he con­firmed.

Mak­ing ref­er­ence to the oth­er drug finds on the port, Ather­ly said: "This is due to on­go­ing op­er­a­tions that are tak­ing place by the au­thor­i­ties. These ex­er­cis­es have been go­ing on even be­fore the state of emer­gency was called. "I will hope this kind of find will boost the con­fi­dence of the gen­er­al pub­lic that the au­thor­i­ties are do­ing their best to en­sure that T&T is a bet­ter place." On March 10 this year, po­lice of­fi­cers of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force seized more than $12 mil­lion in mar­i­jua­na at the port. The drugs were stacked in a 40-foot con­tain­er, filled with pres­sure wash­ers. The drugs weighed close to 300 kilo­grammes.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said that con­tain­er, which left Ja­maica on Feb­ru­ary 25, ar­rived at the Port of Port-of-Spain on March 1 and was lat­er trans­ferred to the Point Lisas Port on March 4. They were alert­ed by port of­fi­cials who be­came sus­pi­cious af­ter notic­ing the seal was tam­pered with. A par­ty of of­fi­cers, led by Sergeant Roger Alexan­der, and in­clud­ing Cor­po­ral Sunil Bharath, Po­lice Con­sta­bles Gor­don Leza­ma and Ce­les­tine, as­sist­ed by mem­bers of the Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Unit, moved in and car­ried out the search. Two days lat­er, of­fi­cers of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise De­part­ment al­so dis­cov­ered the seal of an­oth­er con­tain­er tam­pered with. When they checked, they dis­cov­ered more than $30 mil­lion worth of com­pressed mar­i­jua­na hid­den in sev­er­al con­tain­ers. That con­sign­ment al­so was in­tran­sit from Ja­maica and con­tained ap­prox­i­mate­ly 800 kilo­grammes of com­pressed mar­i­jua­na.