One per­son has been ar­rest­ed and a sub­stan­tial quan­ti­ty of cop­per wire and ca­bles sus­pect­ed to be the prop­er­ty of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) re­cov­ered dur­ing an in­tel­li­gence-led po­lice op­er­a­tion in El So­cor­ro, San Juan.

Po­lice said the re­cov­ered ma­te­r­i­al has a pre­lim­i­nary es­ti­mat­ed val­ue in the mil­lions of dol­lars.

More than $681,000 and US$11,000 were al­so seized dur­ing the ex­er­cise, which be­gan at about 1.30 pm on Fri­day and re­mains on­go­ing.

The op­er­a­tion, code-named Op­er­a­tion Res­olute Shield, was led by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er An­tho­ny Re­my, Se­nior Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne and Supt Glodon.

The ex­er­cise was su­per­vised by As­sis­tant Supt Mark Her­nan­dez and In­spec­tor Ram­per­sad, with field su­per­vi­sion pro­vid­ed by Sgt Samuel and Sgt Parks, of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit, and con­sta­ble Ho­sein.

Po­lice said in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by of­fi­cers led them to a prop­er­ty at Sa­roop Lane, El So­cor­ro, where a search was con­duct­ed. Dur­ing the search, of­fi­cers found a sub­stan­tial quan­ti­ty of pack­aged cop­per wire and ca­bles sus­pect­ed to be TSTT prop­er­ty.

Fur­ther search­es of the prop­er­ty un­cov­ered sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ties of lo­cal and US cur­ren­cy in sep­a­rate lo­ca­tions.

Po­lice said $612,893 and US$11,000 were found in an up­stairs area, while an­oth­er $68,600 was re­cov­ered from a sep­a­rate area of the prop­er­ty. The to­tal cash seized amount­ed to TT$681,493 and US$11,000.

The op­er­a­tion in­volved of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit, Ch­agua­nas CID, Cen­tral CCTV, Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Op­er­a­tions, Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force Ar­eas North and South, the In­ter-Agency Task Force and the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force.

The re­cov­ery comes amid on­go­ing con­cerns over the theft of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing cop­per ca­bles, which can dis­rupt ser­vices and re­sult in sig­nif­i­cant re­place­ment and re­pair costs.

Po­lice said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­mains ac­tive as of­fi­cers con­tin­ue en­quiries in­to the sus­pect­ed stolen ma­te­r­i­al and the cash re­cov­ered.

The iden­ti­ty of the per­son ar­rest­ed was not dis­closed and no charges were an­nounced. The re­cov­ered ca­bles re­main sub­ject to fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tion to de­ter­mine their ori­gin and con­nec­tion to TSTT.