Se­nior of­fi­cers of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Branch (FIB) are ex­pect­ed to make an ap­pli­ca­tion to a Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate to­day to de­tain ad­di­tion­al mil­lions re­cov­ered from the Third Ex­o­dus As­sem­bly Church in Long­denville head­ed by Pas­tor Vin­worth Day­al last Thurs­day.

It took in­ves­ti­ga­tors close to three days to count the ad­di­tion­al mon­ey with the as­sis­tance of sev­er­al billing count­ing ma­chines that were found at the church in a cab­i­net filled with sev­er­al bags with tithe en­velopes.

Sources say the fi­nal count was be­tween two and five mil­lion dol­lars and was con­clud­ed over the week­end. The mon­ey bags had con­tained $20, $10, $5 and $1 bills.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that this ad­di­tion­al mon­ey to­geth­er with the 29 mil­lion dol­lars al­ready seized through a court or­der will be part of the same in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Of­fi­cers had vis­it­ed the church last Thurs­day with Pas­tor Vin­worth present as they widened their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the fi­nan­cial op­er­a­tions of the church af­ter the pas­tor at­tempt­ed to change close to $29mil­lion in old $100 bills on De­cem­ber 31 to the new poly­mer note.

That mon­ey was lat­er seized by po­lice af­ter a court or­der was ob­tained.

Ac­cord­ing to a se­nior po­lice source, the mon­ey had to be count­ed with­in 96 hours so the law­men can go to court and ob­tain a de­ten­tion or­der to have the mon­ey law­ful­ly de­tained for three months un­der the Pro­ceeds and Crime Act so they can pur­sue fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The po­lice had to go to the court be­fore the count­ing of the $29 mil­li­on that was brought in by Pas­tor Day­al on De­cem­ber 31 to en­sure the amount could be law­ful­ly de­tained be­fore the De­cem­ber 31 dead­line. If this had not been done the mon­ey would no longer have been rec­og­nized as le­gal ten­der.

On Thurs­day last, in­ves­ti­ga­tors al­so went to a La Ro­maine house oc­cu­pied by the pas­tor’s rel­a­tives where they seized doc­u­ments.

At the church, that same day, in­ves­ti­ga­tors found thou­sands of en­velopes that con­tained tithes, ac­cord­ing to Pas­tor Day­al, who was present dur­ing the search. The pas­tor ex­plained that there were large brown en­velopes with small­er white en­velopes in­side. The white en­velopes con­tained old $100 bills that were re­moved to be ex­changed and the brown en­velopes con­tained all the “oth­er types of bills.”

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said on De­cem­ber 5 that the new poly­mer $100 bill would help au­thor­i­ties in their fight against mon­ey laun­der­ing and oth­er il­le­gal op­er­a­tions.

The pub­lic was ad­vised to change their old $100 bills for the new poly­mer ban­knotes by De­cem­ber 31, 2019. How­ev­er, the pas­tor came un­der scru­ti­ny af­ter he tried to change close to $29 mil­li­on on the fi­nal day of 2019.

On Fri­day night last Pas­tor Vin­worth in a ser­mon to his fol­low­ers at the cen­tral church claimed that “Sa­tan was try­ing to make him fa­mous” and was un­re­pen­tant about the en­tire sit­u­a­tion.