The seizure of $22 mil­lion from the Drugs Sou Sou in La Hor­quet­ta last week is pos­si­bly one of the biggest mon­ey laun­der­ing op­er­a­tions in T&T.

How­ev­er, it has now been linked to sev­er­al law en­force­ment of­fi­cials with pow­er­ful con­nec­tions and un­der­world fig­ures who are us­ing the DSS, which has been de­scribed as a pyra­mid scheme, to clean their dirty mon­ey.

Se­nior po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia that ac­cord­ing to their in­tel­li­gence, the DSS may be a "well-or­gan­ised mon­ey laun­der­ing scheme un­der the guise of a pyra­mid scheme."

The com­plex in­ves­ti­ga­tion has tak­en many twists and turns since the $22m was seized from a La Hor­quet­ta apart­ment last Tues­day by of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) and mys­te­ri­ous­ly giv­en back mere hours lat­er to the li­cenced mon­ey lender be­hind it, a Lance Cor­po­ral with the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF).

Oth­er top heads of the DSS are al­so army per­son­nel.

Of­fi­cers prob­ing the case have now been tak­en in­to a dark world of mon­ey laun­der­ing where well-known drug and arms deal­ers in the un­der­world are us­ing the guise of the pyra­mid scheme to "wash dirty mon­ey."

Se­nior in­ves­ti­ga­tors said sev­er­al run­ners for un­der­world fig­ures have been seen fre­quent­ing the La Hor­quet­ta apart­ment over the last five weeks. In one in­stance, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said, a well-known un­der­world fig­ure sent a run­ner to the apart­ment about two weeks ago with a mil­lion dol­lars in cash. Po­lice sources said over the past few weeks, mil­lions of dol­lars were tak­en by run­ners for known un­der­world fig­ures.

The is­su­ing of re­ceipts in some cas­es, in­ves­ti­ga­tors al­leged, is on­ly to cre­ate a le­git­i­mate pa­per trail for the il­lic­it mon­ey that was car­ried in to form part of this scheme.

"The pyra­mid scheme was de­signed to cre­ate the il­lu­sion of busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty to ex­plain the source of the mon­ey," re­vealed an in­ves­ti­ga­tor close to the case.

The foun­da­tion of the crime is based main­ly on a cash sys­tem and crim­i­nals and oth­er com­plic­it of­fi­cials can end up with mil­lions of dol­lars that they would not want to ex­plain about to the au­thor­i­ties.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors al­so dis­cov­ered that po­lice and army of­fi­cers com­plic­it in the ac­tiv­i­ty have been paid pro­tec­tion mon­ey for DSS op­er­a­tions to run un­in­ter­rupt­ed.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said at least nine po­lice of­fi­cers and ten army per­son­nel have been in some way in­volved in help­ing to fa­cil­i­tate this scheme for some time now.

A se­nior of­fi­cer in the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive, an ASP, a se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent, an in­spec­tor, two sergeants, one cor­po­ral and two po­lice con­sta­bles, all now iden­ti­fied by name, have been linked to the scheme. Most of the of­fi­cers are at­tached to the North­ern Di­vi­sion with the ex­cep­tion of the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer.

Po­lice al­so have in­for­ma­tion rel­e­vant to one colonel, two lieu­tenant colonels, one ma­jor, two cap­tains, all named, and four oth­er un­named of­fi­cers rang­ing from a Mil­i­tary Trans­port Of­fi­cer (MTO), Reg­i­ment Sar­gent Ma­jor (RSM), a cor­po­ral and a pri­vate.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said based on in­for­ma­tion they have re­ceived, the army per­son­nel were paid at least two or more hands and the TTDF per­son­nel "was giv­en time off and pro­tec­tion with­in the com­pa­ny."

In ref­er­ence to the po­lice of­fi­cers who are al­leged­ly part of the pyra­mid scheme, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said they were "paid ear­ly hands and giv­en hands with­out mon­ey pass­ing to pro­vide pro­tec­tion and the DSS was giv­en the as­sur­ance they will be pro­tect­ed."

Ac­cord­ing to a se­nior in­ves­ti­ga­tor, four days be­fore the raid, the CEO of DSS said, "He didn't want any beef with the po­lice or army," and de­cid­ed to pay them on the Fri­day and Sat­ur­day.

The in­tel­li­gence re­port com­piled by in­ves­ti­ga­tors in­di­cat­ed that po­lice of­fi­cers moon­light­ed with DSS for close to $2,000 per day. They ex­plained that one of­fi­cer would be near the main gate to the premis­es, an­oth­er in the com­pa­ny of the CEO and an­oth­er in a room where there was a vault.

Po­lice pa­trols were al­so part of the arrange­ment as a back-up in case any­thing oc­curred but strict in­struc­tions were giv­en to be as in­vis­i­ble as pos­si­ble.

In many cas­es, se­nior law en­force­ment per­son­nel would use "dis­ar­ma­ment names to dis­guise their names call­ing," an in­tel­li­gence re­port re­vealed.

How­ev­er, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said they are in the process of ob­tain­ing sev­er­al tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions that took place be­tween these law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and ad­min­is­tra­tors of the DSS. This al­so in­cludes text mes­sages.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the CEO, al­so a ser­vice­man, would of­ten boast about be­ing pro­tect­ed by se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors have al­so dis­cov­ered that one of the DSS ad­min per­son­nel, with the alias NN, has a pend­ing gun and rob­bery charge.

Sev­er­al un­der­world fig­ures, in­clud­ing the de­ceased Cedric "Burkie" Burke, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said, in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in this pyra­mid scheme.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said one of the peo­ple con­nect­ed to DSS re­cent­ly pur­chased a new Toy­ota Pra­do (reg­is­tra­tion num­ber in­clud­ed) and a house in the East cost­ing some­where in the re­gion of $1.2m-$1.8m and paid in cash.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they have al­so traced par­tic­u­lar trans­ac­tions to a spe­cif­ic bank that they are al­so ex­am­in­ing in de­tail.

Schemes are as fol­lows:

In­vest the fol­low­ing sums and get re­turns in 21 days.

$3,500 - $28,000

$10,000 - $56,000

$15,000 - $100,000

Grif­fith re­sponds:

Asked to com­ment, CoP Gary Grif­fith said, it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for him to com­ment on the par­tic­u­lar mat­ter as the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing.

"How­ev­er, we have dis­cov­ered that cer­tain so-called sou-sous/pyra­mid schemes are sim­ply cos­met­ic fronts for a mas­sive crim­i­nal op­er­a­tion to laun­der tens of mil­lions ac­quired pri­mar­i­ly from the il­le­gal drug sale by the un­der­world. Very few coun­tries in the world, would the po­lice dis­cov­er over $20 mil­lion in cash in a house, and many get of­fend­ed and shame­less­ly ar­gue that the mon­ey should not have been seized to ver­i­fy that all was ac­quired by le­git­i­mate means."