Cus­toms and T&T Coast Guard of­fi­cials re­cov­ered close to $120 mil­lion worth of co­caine hid­den aboard a for­eign tanker that was docked at the At­lantic Liqui­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) port in Point Fortin some­time on Wednes­day morn­ing.

Cus­toms sources told Guardian Me­dia that sev­en bales of co­caine were found at­tached to the rud­der of the ship His­pania Spir­it. The rud­der is a big met­al flap at­tached to the tail of the ship that as­sists in the steer­ing of the ves­sel.

Sources close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion said be­fore the LNG tanker's de­par­ture the cap­tain was con­duct­ing safe­ty checks when he saw what ap­peared to be sus­pi­cious pack­ages in the rud­der well area. The cap­tain alert­ed a lo­cal agent who lat­er con­tact­ed the T&T se­cu­ri­ty au­thor­i­ties. Coast Guard divers lat­er went in­to the wa­ter and re­trieved the bales of co­caine, which were fas­tened in the rud­der well area with rope. The drugs weighed some 200 kilo­grammes.

Sev­er­al for­eign tankers en­ter the At­lantic port fre­quent­ly to col­lect LNG be­fore leav­ing for their des­ti­na­tions.

Lo­cal Cus­toms sources say they are still try­ing to as­cer­tain whether the bales of co­caine were placed while the ship was docked here or whether the ship en­tered Trinidad and To­ba­go wa­ters un­know­ing­ly with the il­le­gal ship­ment. They were al­so try­ing to as­cer­tain the coun­try of ori­gin of the ves­sel.