An­na-Lisa Paul

While an in­ter­na­tion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion is re­port­ed­ly un­der­way in Por­tu­gal to de­ter­mine where a co­caine haul found aboard a car­go ship that al­leged­ly docked in T&T wa­ters be­tween late April and ear­ly March orig­i­nat­ed con­tin­ues, Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials yes­ter­day de­clined to con­firm or de­ny the ves­sel had, in fact, docked here.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port post­ed to Fleet­Mon.com on Mon­day, the Sin­ga­pore Spir­it, which op­er­ates un­der a Pana­man­ian flag, was in­ter­cept­ed by the Por­tu­gal Navy two days ear­li­er as it sailed the At­lantic.

The brief re­port read, “Gen­er­al car­go ship Sin­ga­pore Spir­it was in­ter­cept­ed by Por­tu­gal Navy and mar­itime po­lice on Mar 4 and brought to Lis­bon. She was berthed on Mar 5, and in the evening same day, po­lice team launched a thor­ough search of the ship. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice in­tel, Sin­ga­pore Spir­it is hav­ing on board a large amount of con­tra­band co­caine, prob­a­bly orig­i­nat­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go, 21 crew de­tained. Ship’s AIS records miss South Amer­i­can voy­age, with last port of call Tekirdag, track start from Caribbean, Trinidad and To­ba­go area, miss­ing the leg from Eu­rope to Caribbean. She was to call Ital­ian port, ac­cord­ing to AIS.”

AIS is the Au­to­mat­ic Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tems whose transpon­ders are de­signed to pro­vide po­si­tion, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and oth­er in­for­ma­tion about a ship to oth­er ships and coastal au­thor­i­ties au­to­mat­i­cal­ly.

While T&T Coast Guard of­fi­cials yes­ter­day de­clined to con­firm the ship had docked in Trinidad, they did not de­ny the boat’s pres­ence in lo­cal wa­ters ei­ther.

Sev­er­al calls to the Har­bour Mas­ter, Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, Port-of-Spain, al­so went unan­swered.

Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan di­rect­ed all queries to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

When Guardian Me­dia reached Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, he too de­clined to con­firm or de­ny the boat’s pres­ence in T&T, as was be­ing claimed on­line.

In­stead, he said, “In the course of our dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties in our fight against transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with our re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners...we in­ter­cept ves­sels and con­duct search­es on a rou­tine ba­sis.

“I am not in a po­si­tion to con­firm or de­ny whether this par­tic­u­lar ves­sel of which you speak, would have been among them.”

Asked if any of the 21 crew mem­bers de­tained were Trinida­di­an, Hinds was un­able to say and promised to look in­to the mat­ter fur­ther.

In 2018, Viet­namese of­fi­cials found US$35 mil­lion worth of co­caine hid­den in a con­tain­er of scrap met­al aboard the ves­sel Mark Shen­zhen that orig­i­nat­ed from T&T. Cus­toms of­fi­cers found four large sacks con­tain­ing 119 kilo­grammes (262 pounds) of co­caine on that ves­sel, hid­den among the scrap iron.