Crit­i­cal phone record­ings be­tween a high-rank­ing po­lice of­fi­cer and a Drugs Sou Sou (DSS) of­fi­cial dis­cussing the ac­tu­al amount of mon­ey seized and a deal to re­lease some of the cash, af­ter it was seized and hauled to the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion, are just some of the cru­cial in­for­ma­tion re­vealed to Guardian Me­dia as the probe in­to the case con­tin­ues.

A per­son close to the DSS op­er­a­tions yes­ter­day claimed that the po­lice ac­tu­al­ly seized close to $92 mil­lion from the La Hor­quet­ta apart­ment where they op­er­at­ed from and there are phone record­ings to prove this.

The rev­e­la­tion came even as a video sur­faced on so­cial me­dia of a mem­ber of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice led raid­ing team stuff­ing his uni­form with mon­ey in one of the rooms dur­ing the op­er­a­tion.

Guardian Me­dia had been re­li­ably in­formed about the phone record­ings and reached out to a DSS of­fi­cial with knowl­edge about the op­er­a­tions and raid. The DSS of­fi­cial con­firmed the phone record­ings and al­so said there was fur­ther video ev­i­dence to prove oth­er wrong­do­ing by law en­force­ment per­son­nel.

“When the po­lice had done the count up to that night at the sta­tion, it was be­tween $22 to $24 mil­lion. But there were two oth­er cas­es of mon­ey un­ac­count­ed for and the ac­tu­al amount of mon­ey that the po­lice seized was near to $92 mil­lion,” the DSS source told Guardian Me­dia on the con­di­tion of strict anonymi­ty af­ter ques­tions had been sent for their re­sponse.

The of­fi­cial was asked if a cer­tain po­lice of­fi­cer (name called) con­tact­ed some­one at DSS.

“I will nei­ther con­firm nor de­ny the name of the of­fi­cer, but there were at least two con­ver­sa­tions with this po­lice of­fi­cer,” the DSS source claimed.

“The of­fi­cer was told there was a large sum of mon­ey not record­ed in the re­ceipts and the per­son in­formed the po­lice of­fi­cer there was ac­tu­al­ly $92 mil­lion.”

Asked about the sec­ond phone con­ver­sa­tion, the DSS source said, “In that phone call, some kind of arrange­ment was made where $74 mil­lion would be re­turned to DSS and the oth­er $18 mil­lion would be kept.”

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that the re­main­ing mon­ey was to be split be­tween law en­force­ment per­son­nel in­volved in the DSS op­er­a­tion and oth­ers they co-opt­ed in­to the act to re­trieve the seized mon­ey.

Apart from two of­fi­cers who had vis­it­ed the DSS lo­ca­tion dur­ing the count of the seized on Tues­day night, a phone call was al­so made by the high-rank­ing of­fi­cer to en­sure the mon­ey was re­leased to the DSS han­dlers af­ter the al­leged deal was struck.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that there are sev­er­al au­dio record­ings and videos over a pe­ri­od of time al­leged­ly prov­ing wrong­do­ing.

“There was no ver­i­fy­ing of the source of funds in this in­stance but it was re­leased in the wee hours of Wednes­day morn­ing,” said a se­nior po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tor in­volved in the case.

Of­fi­cers of the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Branch (FIB) were present when the ini­tial count be­gan at 8.30 pm on Tues­day but lat­er left, leav­ing main­ly North­ern Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers at the sta­tion.

Up to the time FIB and SORT of­fi­cers left the La Hor­quet­ta sta­tion, the to­tal count­ed thus far giv­en by the North­ern Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers was $22 mil­lion and this was the in­for­ma­tion passed on to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

But a se­nior FIB in­ves­ti­ga­tor made it clear that they were not in­volved in the ac­tu­al count­ing of the seized funds, not­ing they would on­ly have been able to take pos­ses­sion of the cash af­ter the count was fin­ished and all nec­es­sary pro­to­cols were ob­served. The FIB had hoped to do that the fol­low­ing morn­ing but the mon­ey was re­leased be­fore they could re­turn to the sta­tion.

A le­gal source told Guardian Me­dia that un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, there was per­haps a case for the DSS to an­swer un­der the Se­cu­ri­ties Act since the com­pa­ny iden­ti­fied it­self as an in­vest­ment com­pa­ny but may not be reg­is­tered un­der this act.

An­oth­er source added there were ques­tions to an­swer on the cul­pa­bil­i­ty of al­leged mon­ey laun­der­ing.

An army in­tel­li­gence source al­so said yes­ter­day that three days af­ter com­mu­ni­ty leader Cedric “Burkie” Burke died, some of his rel­a­tives and as­so­ciates vis­it­ed DSS in the hope of get­ting mon­ey he had poured in­to the scheme.

Sources claimed Burke had de­posit­ed $12 mil­lion and when his as­so­ciates ar­rived at DSS they were told they would be giv­en on­ly some of the mon­ey. Burke’s as­so­ciates want­ed all the cash and so left and re­turned a few days lat­er, on­ly to be still told that DSS was un­able to pay since Burke, who had died from COVID-19, nev­er left any in­struc­tions to pay any­one out when he died.