Of­fi­cials at the Port of Port-of-Spain stopped mil­lions of dol­lars in equip­ment from be­ing loaded un­to the Cara­bia, a ves­sel bound for Guyana, af­ter dis­cov­er­ing sev­er­al dis­crep­an­cies in the doc­u­ments pre­sent­ed.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia four of the trail­ers, part of a ship­ment be­ing loaded for a project in Guyana by a lo­cal con­trac­tor, ap­peared to be un­reg­is­tered.

"What we found out was that the un­reg­is­tered trail­ers had reg­is­tered num­ber plates on them. We lat­er had to re­move the plates from the trail­ers and have it checked," said a se­nior port source fa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion.

Of­fi­cers from the Fraud Squad and the Stolen Ve­hi­cles Squad were alert­ed about the sit­u­a­tion and were speak­ing to port of­fi­cials about the in­ci­dent.

Ques­tions were al­so raised about some dump trucks that were al­so to be loaded on the ves­sel.

"What the ship­ping agent told us was that the cer­tifi­cates pre­sent­ed for the dump trucks were not what he was ac­cus­tomed to see­ing. There was the gen­er­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the trucks but on these cer­tifi­cates, some im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion was miss­ing," the port source said.

The ves­sel which ar­rived last night of­floaded 669 cars—257 new ve­hi­cles, 331 used and 81 tran­ship­ment ve­hi­cles—and had been ex­pect­ed to load up and leave by just af­ter lunch to­day.

"In­struc­tions have been giv­en that noth­ing is to be loaded on­to that ves­sel un­til prop­er checks are made," the source said

An of­fi­cer at the Stolen Ve­hi­cles Fraud Squad said checks will have to be made to en­sure chas­sis num­bers match up to the trucks on the port. They will have to li­aise with Cus­toms and Ex­cise to ver­i­fy the in­for­ma­tion on the C82 form. The source ex­plained this is some­thing that has to be done when any ve­hi­cles or sim­i­lar equip­ment en­ter or leave the coun­try.