Mark Bas­sant

An es­ti­mat­ed $.3m in co­caine was found hid­den in pre­served fruits at the TTPost Na­tion­al Mail Cen­tre in Pi­ar­co yes­ter­day evening.

The co­caine find came mere hours af­ter Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers and the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) made a sig­nif­i­cant arms and am­mu­ni­tion dis­cov­ery at a Cen­tral ware­house in Cou­va on Mon­day night, which fol­lowed an­oth­er large arms and am­mu­ni­tion find last Fri­day at the bond at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Se­nior sources at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion told Guardian Me­dia that the pack­age was dropped off at the TTPost cen­ter just af­ter lunch yes­ter­day. Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers ex­am­ined the pack­age around 2.30 pm.

The of­fi­cers lat­er dis­sect­ed the prunes and cher­ries in the pre­served pack­ets and found what ap­peared to be co­caine in­side.

The drugs were lat­er weighed and some 610 grams were dis­cov­ered. Sources say the es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue was US$55,000 (TT$374,000). One kilo­gram of co­caine, ac­cord­ing to law en­force­ment sources, is worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$80,000 on the streets.

The ship­ment was des­tined for the Unit­ed States.

Late yes­ter­day, a re­lease from TTPost con­firmed the find and con­grat­u­lat­ed staff at the Na­tion­al Mail Cen­tre, as well as the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers, for their dili­gence in the mat­ter.

The re­lease stat­ed, “A se­nior of­fi­cial at TTPost com­pli­ment­ed the staff for their alert­ness in deem­ing the pack­age sus­pi­cious. He ad­vised that this same lev­el of scruti­ny is con­sis­tent with TTPost op­er­at­ing stan­dards and that the pack­age would have gone through a fur­ther lev­el of ex­am­i­na­tion at the fa­cil­i­ties of the in­ter­na­tion­al couri­er com­pa­ny that was des­tined to take the pack­age to the Unit­ed States.

“The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion was com­mend­ed for their swift work in this mat­ter, as well as oth­er agen­cies who con­tributed to foil­ing this ap­par­ent at­tempt at ex­port­ing il­le­gal sub­stances to the Unit­ed States.”