A quan­ti­ty of cash seized from a house in Val­sayn re­mained in po­lice cus­tody up to Thurs­day af­ter­noon, as of­fi­cers from the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (FIB) con­tin­ue to trace the ori­gin of the funds.

The cash was seized some­time be­tween Fri­day af­ter­noon and ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing, when of­fi­cers of the DCP’s Task Force, the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Unit, the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Task Force and the po­lice ca­nine unit vis­it­ed sev­er­al homes in Val­sayn to search for drugs and guns.

On en­ter­ing one of the homes, po­lice found $29,000 and US$2,500, which was con­fis­cat­ed.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers of the FIB were trac­ing the ori­gin of the cash to de­ter­mine whether or not it was the pro­ceeds of crime or part of wider crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

One po­lice source said the per­son claim­ing own­er­ship of the funds would be re­quired to prove how they ob­tained the funds, ei­ther with re­ceipts or dig­i­tal records, be­fore it could be re­turned to them.

The of­fi­cer not­ed that of­fi­cers would be re­quired to go be­fore a chief mag­is­trate to ob­tain a cash seizure or­der. Once grant­ed, such an or­der would em­pow­er of­fi­cers to hold the mon­ey for a max­i­mum pe­ri­od of two years, which can be re­newed at three-month in­ter­vals.

The source al­so said if in­ves­ti­ga­tions prove the cash was ob­tained il­le­gal­ly, a for­fei­ture or­der can be is­sued by a chief mag­is­trate for the mon­ey to re­main in the cus­tody of the po­lice.