Jensen La Vende

One week af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered two un­der­ground tanks filled with more than 11,000 litres of diesel at Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, an­oth­er il­le­gal bunker­ing op­er­a­tion was found near­by dur­ing a po­lice ex­er­cise.Po­lice ad­mit­ted they stum­bled across the il­le­gal op­er­a­tion by ac­ci­dent.

Of­fi­cers of the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and Besson Street CID were on pa­trol in the Laven­tille and Port-of-Spain ar­eas when they came acrosss five 1,000-gal­lon wa­ter tanks at an aban­doned house around 11.30 am.Of the five tanks, NP of­fi­cials said on­ly one had fu­el. They si­phoned ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 litres of diesel.Fur­ther checks by po­lice un­cov­ered two elec­tri­cal pumps, which were pow­ered by ex­ten­sion cords, from a near­by house.

The own­er of the house is in prison ac­cused of mur­der, po­lice said. The dis­cov­ery yes­ter­day is con­nect­ed to that last Mon­day's find as Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um of­fi­cials be­lieved that the two un­der­ground tanks found last week was a main stor­age area for the diesel rack­e­teers.Coast Guard divers were called in to re­move an un­der­wa­ter hose which trav­elled to the Cari­com Jet­tyYes­ter­day's find was the fourth for the year and in the Sea Lots com­mu­ni­ty.

Last Mon­day, of­fi­cers from the IATF were on pa­trol in Sea Lots when they found the two un­der­ground tanks on an aban­doned lot of land.The tanks, lo­cat­ed near the shore, were es­ti­mat­ed to be 12 feet deep and con­tained thou­sands of litres of fu­el.