Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Twen­ty peo­ple, among them a po­lice of­fi­cer and busi­ness­men, were ar­rest­ed yes­ter­day af­ter po­lice seized 60 cars which they be­lieve were stolen. The ar­rest­ed peo­ple were up to late yes­ter­day un­der in­ter­ro­ga­tion. Their ar­rests stemmed from Mon­day's search at the Li­cens­ing Of­fices in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do in which Fraud Squad de­tec­tives and of­fi­cers from the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit seized hun­dreds of doc­u­ments from both Li­cens­ing of­fices. Po­lice said yes­ter­day the ju­nior of­fi­cer un­der in­ter­ro­ga­tion worked at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion in east Port-of-Spain.

The of­fi­cers raid­ed a garage in cen­tral Trinidad and re­cov­ered sev­er­al of the stolen cars. In­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers said the rack­et in­volved reg­is­tra­tion of for­eign-used ve­hi­cles, il­le­gal reg­is­tra­tion and is­suance of dri­ving per­mits The of­fi­cers al­so seized sev­er­al doc­u­ments be­fore leav­ing the build­ings. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.