Camille Clarke

Six rel­a­tives of late con­trac­tor Hafeez Kara­math have been charged with pos­ses­sion of guns, am­mu­ni­tion and dan­ger­ous drugs.

They are ex­pect­ed to an­swer charges for the pos­ses­sion of 18 high-pow­ered ri­fles and a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na which were seized from the Val­sayn man­sion of the con­trac­tor. Oth­er items found were as­sault ri­fles, in­clud­ing a range of AK-47s, long range sniper ri­fles, a gas mask con­vert­ed to a drug pipe and oth­er drug ap­pa­ra­tus­es, jam jars con­tain­ing il­lic­it nar­cotics in­clud­ing pow­er­ful hal­lu­cino­genic drugs along with com­pressed mar­i­jua­na.

The items were seized Thurs­day dur­ing the po­lice crack­down.

The jars car­ried such la­bels as lemon skunk, sweet kush, bub­ba kush, ex­o­dus cheese, k-train, cho­co­lope, pur­ple urkel, am­ne­sia, big bud and cream sick­le. There were al­so chillum pipes of var­i­ous sizes and colours and dec­o­rat­ed with skulls and bones. A 15-year-old boy and two women were among the six peo­ple ar­rest­ed, af­ter of­fi­cers of the po­lice An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau raid­ed Kara­math's fam­i­ly home at Palm Trace, Val­sayn. The 23-year-old son of the late Kara­math was al­so held.

The six ar­rest­ed peo­ple are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate on Mon­day. This po­lice ac­tion per­tained to on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to Calder Hart as chair­man of state-owned Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott). Un­der the di­rec­tion of An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau's Snr Supt Solomon Koon Koon, of­fi­cers raid­ed the house to source doc­u­ments that could as­sist them with in­quiries. They al­so vis­it­ed an­oth­er prop­er­ty at Cyrus Street, San Juan. As the of­fi­cers stormed the house, they are said to have stum­bled up­on the firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and mar­i­jua­na.

Cheese, laven­der, salmon and juicy fruit were oth­er ti­tles on the glass jars. The po­lice al­so seized a chillum pipe which was at­tached to a breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus. Po­lice al­so al­leged­ly found sev­er­al pack­ages of dif­fer­ent species of mag­ic mush­rooms. Sev­er­al .22, .380, 9 mm, glock and Uzi firearms, along with am­mu­ni­tion, were seized. A num­ber of sex­u­al de­vices were al­so dis­cov­ered. Dur­ing the search of the sprawl­ing es­tate, the po­lice al­so found three Cau­casian Moun­tain Dogs. The dogs were be­lieved to have been kept in a three-storey house which was made in­to a ken­nel for them.

Kara­math was re­port­ed to have paid $500,000 to im­port the dogs. The An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau works in close as­so­ci­a­tion with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, who has an­nounced a ma­jor crack­down on wrong­do­ing with the pub­lic purse. A joint in­ves­ti­ga­tion by of­fi­cers of the Or­gan­ised Crime Nar­cotics and Firearms Bu­reau and CID will as­sist in up­com­ing in­quiries. The Kara­math com­pa­ny was the main con­trac­tor at the still in­com­plete Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, said to have cost tax­pay­ers al­most $1 bil­lion. Kara­math, a key wit­ness in the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry, died of lung can­cer last year.