Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin has com­mend­ed all of­fi­cers and agen­cies in­volved in the seizure of over $250 mil­lion worth of co­caine in a ship­ping ves­sel head­ed to St Mar­tin.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the TTPS said DCP In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Suzette Mar­tin co­or­di­nat­ed the po­lice op­er­a­tions which al­so in­volved the Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DEA) Port-of-Spain Of­fice, US JI­ATF South and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG).

The TTPS said the il­le­gal drugs were “ex­pert­ly con­cealed with­in a deeply sealed com­part­ment aboard a ship­ping ves­sel.”

Po­lice said the ves­sel, which came from Guyana to Trinidad on Feb­ru­ary 25, was un­der sur­veil­lance and ob­served on March 11 re­ceiv­ing a large ship­ment of var­i­ous goods. On March 12, the crew left with the ves­sel and took a dif­fer­ent route, which aroused sus­pi­cion.

How­ev­er, the Coast Guard was able to in­ter­cept the ves­sel and took it to Staubles Bay. Af­ter a two-day in­spec­tion with the use of the Ca­nine Unit, found and seized 157 pack­ets of co­caine, weigh­ing a com­bined to­tal of 182.24 kilo­grammes, with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $254,027,980.80. Five crew mem­bers were ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the find.