Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Unit­ed States au­thor­i­ties have seized an es­ti­mat­ed US$100 mil­lion (ap­prox TT$644 mil­lion) worth of co­caine con­cealed in cans of juice shipped from Trinidad to Nor­folk, Vir­ginia.Al­though the ship­ment was seized on De­cem­ber 20, the haul was on­ly re­port­ed in US me­dia on Thurs­day af­ter of­fi­cials held a me­dia brief­ing and is­sued a press re­lease. The find was de­scribed as the largest seizure in the port of Nor­folk's his­to­ry.

The drugs were con­cealed in 700 cans that ap­pear to be man­u­fac­tured by the Cit­rus Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, a sub­sidiary of SM Jaleel, and were be­ing shipped in a con­tain­er des­tined for New York. The cans con­tained a to­tal of 732 pounds of co­caine. The cans con­tain­ing the drugs al­so con­tained some liq­uid. Con­flict­ing re­ports sur­faced on whether the drugs were found fol­low­ing a tip-off or through a ran­dom search.

In a sto­ry car­ried in a Vir­ginia pa­per, the Dai­ly Press, US Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion (CBP) area port di­rec­tor Mark Lar­ia said of­fi­cers used ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy to do an ini­tial in­spec­tion of the 20-foot con­tain­er, but af­ter anom­alies were dis­cov­ered, they did a more ex­ten­sive search, dur­ing which time the nar­cotics were found.

The re­port said they dis­cov­ered the drugs by a "cold hit," mean­ing of­fi­cials re­ceived no spe­cif­ic in­tel­li­gence about its pres­ence. Rather, a CBP of­fi­cer tar­get­ed the ship­ment for in­spec­tion us­ing port knowl­edge, au­to­mat­ic tar­get­ing tools and in­for­ma­tion about re­cent smug­gling trends, Lar­ia said. How­ev­er, US-based News Chan­nel 3 re­port­ed that the con­tain­er was flagged as soon as it left T&T, but the CBP could not check it un­til it got to the US.

This is the sec­ond time in as many months that SM Jaleel's prod­ucts have been im­pli­cat­ed in a drug case. Roy­al Navy vet­er­an Joromie Lewis, 33, of Gosport, Hamp­shire, died hours af­ter drink­ing a co­caine-taint­ed 20-oz Pear D drink on De­cem­ber 5. This prompt­ed the com­pa­ny to re­move the prod­uct from lo­cal shelves. It does not ex­port Pear D to the UK.

Grif­fith: We're co-op­er­at­ing

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day that T&T is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the US Drug En­force­ment Agency to crack drug car­tels.Al­though he re­fused to com­ment on the Nor­folk drug bust be­cause in­ves­ti­ga­tions were on­go­ing, Grif­fith ad­mit­ted that such busts were the re­sult of in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion.Say­ing in­tel­li­gence was be­ing shared in re­al time, Grif­fith re­vealed that 41 weapons had been seized in T&T with­in 16 days, along with 50 ki­los of co­caine and 20 ki­los of mar­i­jua­na.

"Agree­ments have been signed with Venezuela and Colom­bia to stamp out the drug trade," Grif­fith said.He added that T&T's in­tel­li­gence al­so passed in­for­ma­tion to the Unit­ed King­dom and the French cus­toms, which led to the seizure of 800 ki­los of co­caine re­cent­ly.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams did not an­swer his phone so the T&T Guardian could ver­i­fy whether the po­lice were as­sist­ing the US with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Head of the Or­gan­ised Crime, Nar­cotics and Firearms Unit, act­ing Se­nior Supt Gar­rick al­so could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.Press spe­cial­ist in the pub­lic af­fairs sec­tion of the US Em­bassy, Charleen Thomas, could not give de­tails on whether the em­bassy was aware of the Nor­folk seizure or if any ar­rests had been made.

The em­bassy's Alexan­der Mc Laren said the Nor­folk drug bust was a US-based case so ques­tions should be raised with Vir­ginia Dabbs, the CBP pub­lic af­fairs spe­cial­ist for the State of Vir­ginia. She could not be reached up to press time.Com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise De­part­ment Ali­cia Charles al­so said she would in­ves­ti­gate the ori­gins of the ship­ment yes­ter­day, but she too was un­avail­able up to press time.

Ship­ment not ours–SM Jaleel

SM Jaleel yes­ter­day de­nied that the ship­ment was theirs. Asked if they shipped juice to the US, a com­pa­ny spokesman said Trinidad Juice is of­fi­cial­ly ex­port­ed to the US all year round."All ex­port con­tain­ers shipped in 2013 were re­ceived by the au­tho­rised food and bev­er­age com­pa­ny, the last ship­ment be­ing re­ceived in No­vem­ber. This De­cem­ber ship­ment was not made by SM Jaleel."

Asked whether the com­pa­ny planned to with­draw the juices lo­cal­ly, the spokesman said: "There is no rea­son to with­draw the prod­uct. The US au­thor­i­ties have not is­sued a prod­uct re­call, which they would if there was the slight­est sus­pi­cion of pub­lic health con­cerns."From the ABC re­port, co­caine was not in the juice. The tins which con­tained juice did not con­tain the tight­ly packed co­caine.

"SM Jaleel will con­tin­ue to com­ply with the var­i­ous leg­is­la­tions both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly re­lat­ing to the pro­duc­tion and ex­por­ta­tion of prod­ucts."In a state­ment post­ed on its Web site, the com­pa­ny said: "It is com­mon knowl­edge that the crim­i­nals in­volved in the drug trade have been us­ing mech­a­nisms to trans­port co­caine such as fruit, car parts, lum­ber, hard­ware etc.

"It now ap­pears that some­one may be try­ing to utilise our com­pa­ny's prod­uct in this re­gard. We too have on­ly just been re­cent­ly in­formed of the sit­u­a­tion that oc­curred al­most a month ago, re­gard­ing the use of our TJC or­ange–and grape­fruit-flavoured juice tins in the smug­gling of co­caine in­to the US and have, to date, not been con­tact­ed by the rel­e­vant US au­thor­i­ties in con­nec­tion with this mat­ter. At present we have no knowl­edge or ev­i­dence of the de­tails oth­er than the press re­lease from the US.

"We have al­ready com­menced our own in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion; how­ev­er, we are not yet in a po­si­tion to pro­vide any fur­ther de­tails at this time."The com­pa­ny said nei­ther the Nar­cotics Bu­reau nor T&T Cus­toms were con­tact­ed by the US au­thor­i­ties, so this like­ly meant that it is a for­eign is­sue that will be solved abroad.

No lo­cal re­call

The Min­istry of Health has not or­dered the with­draw­al of Trinidad Juices from lo­cal shelves.Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Collin Fur­longe said the fruit juices can­not be re­called un­til in­ves­ti­ga­tions are com­plete."I will in fact try and find out more about the mat­ter be­fore I make any rec­om­men­da­tions about this," Fur­longe said.Di­rec­tor of the Chem­istry Food and Drug Di­vi­sion Adri­an Mc Carthy al­so said shelf re­calls can­not be done with­out prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

"Usu­al­ly we will be alert­ed through in­ter­na­tion­al health reg­u­la­tions about this mat­ter. We are part of that net­work and we re­ceive alerts from them con­cern­ing mat­ters like this. We have not re­ceived any such di­rec­tive," Mc Carthy said.

Asked whether he be­lieved a prod­uct re­call was war­rant­ed, Mc Carthy ad­mit­ted, "That is not some­thing we can eas­i­ly do. To make that rec­om­men­da­tion is harsh un­til we in­ves­ti­gate. We should have been alert­ed to this al­ready. We knew of the in­ci­dent in the UK but not this one. I can­not make a de­fin­i­tive state­ment un­til in­ves­ti­ga­tions are com­plete."