Geisha Kow­lessar

Ship­ping doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to the ex­port of lo­cal juices to Vir­ginia were seized yes­ter­day by Unit­ed States Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DEA) agents and lo­cal law en­force­ment of­fi­cials, as they closed in on the sus­pects be­lieved to be be­hind the es­ti­mat­ed TT $.6 bil­lion co­caine seizure last month.A promi­nent T&T busi­ness­man, sources said, had al­so been iden­ti­fied as a prime sus­pect and a state­ment of case "with all the ev­i­dence to sup­port an ex­tra­di­tion re­quest has been draft­ed by the US au­thor­i­ties."The US probers, sources added, have been work­ing in­de­pen­dent of lo­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tors.Among the doc­u­ments seized were a bill of land­ing which would have named the con­signee, the ex­porter and a full de­scrip­tion of the goods and its in­tend­ed des­ti­na­tion.The drug was seized by Unit­ed States Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion (CBP) Of­fi­cers at the Port of Nor­folk on De­cem­ber 20 but the haul was not an­nounced un­til last Thurs­day.The co­caine was be­ing smug­gled in­to the US in over 700 cans mixed in­to a ship­ment of Trinidad juice prod­ucts which are man­u­fac­tured by Cit­rus Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion.

Sources from the Or­gan­ised Crime, Nar­cotics and Firearms Bu­reau (OC­NFB), who are work­ing close­ly with Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, yes­ter­day said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion had reached a "sen­si­tive stage" with a list of sus­pects al­ready com­plied.They said they were al­so not rul­ing out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that em­ploy­ees of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion may be in­volved, not­ing that the co­caine-smug­gling op­er­a­tion was "well or­gan­ised" and in­volved "ma­jor play­ers" with "far-reach­ing ten­ta­cles."Civil­ians, who al­so han­dle large vol­umes of pa­per work, are al­so be­ing looked at as pos­si­ble sus­pects.Speak­ing on the CNC3's Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, for­mer head of the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty, at­tor­ney David West, said when the con­tain­er was seized it would have been kept con­fi­den­tial and of­fi­cers from the DEA would have then gath­ered their in­for­ma­tion and re­search.He said the fact that the DEA was in­volved was a sig­nal they had a good idea of their in­tend­ed tar­get and an ex­tra­di­tion re­quest would be made when their probe was com­plet­ed.

Say­ing the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ce­dures was not lengthy West added: "The longest part is in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and if the DEA is car­ry­ing out the in­ter­views it is just to wrap up."He said one of the key is­sues which must be ex­am­ined was how the drugs en­tered T&T, since the coun­try was not a man­u­fac­tur­er of co­caine.He added: "For that amount of drugs to come in some­thing has to be wrong some­where. These drugs are main­ly bought on cred­it and on­ly when it is sold the man­u­fac­tur­er gets his mon­ey."So what is go­ing to hap­pen now is there is go­ing to be a huge fall out be­cause some­body has lost out on a big pay­day."West said all the lo­cal agen­cies need­ed to work to­geth­er to stamp out the drug trade."This is a clas­si­cal case of trans-na­tion­al or­gan­ised crime. You have drugs leav­ing one con­ti­nent, com­ing in­to Trinidad and to be ex­port­ed to the US.

"It is very com­plex and we have to have all the agen­cies work­ing to­geth­er and they must have com­pe­tent per­sons work­ing in them so they can analyse the da­ta and make the prop­er rec­om­men­da­tions to the au­thor­i­ties that be."He al­so ques­tioned why the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties did not seize the drugs if they were aware of it.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said peo­ple were mak­ing all sorts of com­ments on the mat­ter but they had no knowl­edge of law en­force­ment.He said his aim was to "go af­ter the big fish" and the bust was a tes­ti­mo­ny of the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.Grif­fith said he had not yet been briefed by the DEA on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion but said the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) and Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime Unit (TOCU) was al­so in­volved in the probe.

Seaboard re­sponds

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, ship­ping com­pa­ny, Seaboard Ma­rine, main­tained it had a proud his­to­ry of in­tegri­ty in its in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions."In com­plete agree­ment with our much-val­ued client, SM Jaleel, Seaboard Ma­rine re­con­firms that it op­er­ates ex­clu­sive­ly out of the port of Point Lisas and not the Port of Port-of-Spain."To cor­rob­o­rate and re­it­er­ate what has been stat­ed by our client, such ship­ments trans­port­ed by Seaboard Ma­rine ves­sels are not land­ed in Nor­folk, Vir­ginia, as we do not of­fer a ser­vice to this port," the re­lease said.

Bharat meets stake­hold­ers

Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath al­so met yes­ter­day with se­nior of­fi­cials of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and Ex­porTT Ltd to dis­cuss the is­sue.The min­istry's man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Yolande Agard-Sim­mons, said dis­cus­sions were held on en­sur­ing all items for ex­port were thor­ough­ly checked and ver­i­fied, via the cer­tifi­cate of ori­gin and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of more rig­or­ous ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cis­es by Cus­toms and Ex­cise."Lengthy dis­cus­sions were held on im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures that will mit­i­gate against such re­oc­cur­rences, while in no way in­hibit­ing trade and en­sur­ing that the rep­u­ta­tion of our lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers is pro­tect­ed from un­scrupu­lous crim­i­nal el­e­ments," Agard-Sim­mons said.A re­lease from the min­istry added that stake­hold­ers said a ro­bust plan of ac­tion would be de­vel­oped to pro­tect lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and the coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al im­age. It added that in­ves­ti­ga­tions had re­vealed SM Jaleel was not re­spon­si­ble for the ship­ment."The Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ment, through its agency Ex­porTT Ltd, con­firms that the ship­ment in ques­tion was not ex­port­ed by our lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er, Trinidad Juice Com­pa­ny Ltd, and reaf­firms its com­mit­ment in sup­port­ing the le­git­i­mate op­er­a­tions of all lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers."It added that an­oth­er meet­ing would be held with more stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms, to­mor­row.