Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors are now on the hunt for the “Big Fish” in con­nec­tion with yes­ter­day’s $3 mil­lion drug bust that oc­curred at North Val­sayn.

A busi­ness­man linked to a pop­u­lar fur­ni­ture chain in T&T owns the res­i­dence, ac­cord­ing to sources.

Guardian Me­dia was told that in­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve that there is al­so a “strong” Colom­bian link to the mas­sive drug ring that they be­lieve they have “cracked.”

Four Venezue­lan women were among nine peo­ple ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the drug haul and up to press time were be­ing ques­tioned by the po­lice.

It was not known, how­ev­er, whether or not any in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed by the sus­pects of the busi­ness­man’s role in the op­er­a­tion, if any.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said it was “too ear­ly to com­ment on any­thing fur­ther in re­la­tion to the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”

This is the sec­ond mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar drug bust in less than one month by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 2 am, act­ing on in­tel­li­gence, of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT), the North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, Crime Scene Unit, Ca­nine Unit and Gang En­force­ment Team ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at a house at May­field Road, North Val­sayn.

Dur­ing a search of a Nis­san E25 pan­el van, the of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered 600 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na pack­aged in sev­er­al black garbage bags.

Po­lice sub­se­quent­ly ar­rest­ed five men and four Venezue­lan women, who were all, up to press time said to be as­sist­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors. They were oc­cu­pants of the house, po­lice said.

Po­lice al­so seized three ve­hi­cles from the com­pound dur­ing the op­er­a­tion.

In re­sponse to the ma­jor drug bust, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) said he in­tends to “break the back of the drug trade and crip­ple their busi­ness.”

“This op­er­a­tion fol­lows with the re­cent one when over $2 mil­lion dol­lars of il­le­gal drugs and sev­er­al au­to­mat­ic ri­fles were seized and per­sons held. When such seizures take place, some­body in the un­der­world los­es out which is not my con­cern,” Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith promised that the more crim­i­nal el­e­ments com­mit vi­o­lent crimes and the more death threats they send, the hard­er he and the TTPS “would swing.”

“At the end of the 12 rounds, with the grace of God, good would pre­vail over evil and we would re­main stand­ing,” Grif­fith said.

A res­i­dent from the area, a busi­ness­man, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said they on­ly know of any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties when “po­lice op­er­a­tions like this takes place.”

“This is a high­ly res­i­den­tial area that not a soul could be seen walk­ing the road day or night…yes, ve­hi­cles pass but no one takes note…yes, there is pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty for the res­i­dents who do pa­trols but still, no one takes note of any move­ment from any­one.”

“Over the years we have heard about drugs, guns, ex­ot­ic an­i­mals be­ing found, il­le­gal im­mi­grants be­ing housed at some of the man­sions around but we don’t know what’s hap­pen­ing around us…on­ly when it hits the news…but, it is fright­en­ing to know that your neigh­bour is in­volved in some il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty of such se­ri­ous and mafia-type na­ture. You on­ly see these things in the movies,” the busi­ness­man added.

On No­vem­ber 9, a cache of high-pow­ered mil­i­tary type weapons, am­mu­ni­tion and over 100 pack­ets of mar­i­jua­na were seized by po­lice at Apart­ment 4, Block 7, Macaya Trace, Munroe Road, Cunu­pia.

On No­vem­ber 13, Barataria busi­ness­man, Jerome Ju­nior Ol­livierre, 28, ap­peared be­fore a Ch­agua­nas mag­is­trate charged with the of­fence.

In a si­mul­ta­ne­ous ex­er­cise that same day (No­vem­ber 9), of­fi­cers of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force dis­cov­ered 68 pack­ets of mar­i­jua­na val­ued ap­prox­i­mate­ly $.5 mil­lion.

The of­fi­cers act­ed on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived and went to Caigual Road, San­gre Chiq­ui­to where they con­duct­ed a search of a bushy area. The of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing of­fi­cers from the Va­len­cia and San­gre Grande CID, found the pack­ets of mar­i­jua­na hid­den in four white con­tain­ers. Po­lice said the drugs weighed 46.2 kilo­grammes. Po­lice al­so found a bul­let­proof vest. No one was ar­rest­ed.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.