Po­lice ar­rest­ed eight peo­ple and seized more than $94 mil­lion in mar­i­jua­na in an op­er­a­tion in cen­tral Trinidad.

A re­port said ex­ten­sive in­tel­li­gence and in­ves­tiga­tive work con­duct­ed by the Po­lice Ser­vice led to a ma­jor dis­rup­tion of a transna­tion­al or­gan­ised drug syn­di­cate with con­nec­tions in the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom, Cana­da and Ja­maica.

Around 10.30 am on Wednes­day of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau, the North­ern Di­vi­sion Gang Unit, the In­ter Agency Task Force (IATF), with sup­port from of­fi­cers of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise De­part­ment and Port Se­cu­ri­ty, in­ter­cept­ed a con­tain­er at Ko­la­hal Road, Char­lieville, Ch­agua­nas.

The con­tain­er re­port­ed­ly left the Port of Port-of-Spain Port on the same day.

On search­ing the con­tain­er, of­fi­cers found 958 box­es con­tain­ing a com­pressed mar­i­jua­na, which weighed 947.64 kilo­grammes, with a street val­ue of $94,764,000.

Eight peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and the sum of $60,000 was al­so seized.

Act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) in charge of in­ves­ti­ga­tions and In­tel­li­gence Mc Don­ald Ja­cob said the op­er­a­tion was as a re­sult of co­op­er­a­tion from oth­er in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal law en­force­ment agen­cies.

He al­so said the ma­jor break­through was due to the ef­forts be­ing made by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith to en­gen­der co­op­er­a­tion among the var­i­ous re­gion­al law en­force­ment agen­cies.

Cpl Stephen­son of the North­ern Di­vi­sion is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Charges are ex­pect­ed to be laid soon, both by the Po­lice and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.