Fol­low­ing the ar­rest of four Chi­nese na­tion­als at a house in the up­scale gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty of Mil­len­ni­um Park, Trinci­ty, last Wednes­day and the con­fis­ca­tion of more than $8 mil­lion worth of drugs along with a quan­ti­ty of lo­cal and for­eign cur­ren­cy, se­nior of­fi­cials with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) says that the set-up is “not the work of low-lev­el street crim­i­nals.”

Act­ing on in­for­ma­tion, North­ern Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers led by As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice De­osaran of the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant for firearms and am­mu­ni­tion at the house at Olympia Av­enue.

Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers found and seized 201 glass vials each la­belled Ke­t­a­mine ten per cent INJ 23ml for Vet­eri­nary Use On­ly.

In ad­di­tion, 76 zip-lock pack­ets each con­tain­ing a white crys­tal-like sub­stance re­sem­bling the dan­ger­ous drug Ke­t­a­mine were al­so seized.

Jaicheng Jiang held by police during the search.

TTPS

They al­so found and seized $33,775 TT in poly­mer notes; $865 Yen; and $53 TT in cot­ton notes along with a quan­ti­ty of ap­pa­ra­tus.

Jaicheng Jiang, 26, was ar­rest­ed and sub­se­quent­ly charged by PC Ger­ald of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) with pos­ses­sion of Ke­t­a­mine for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing.

The Ke­t­a­mine weighed 12.7 kilo­grams and had a street val­ue of $8,623,300 TT.

Ke­t­a­mine is a med­ica­tion pri­mar­i­ly used for in­duc­tion and main­te­nance of anaes­the­sia. It in­duces dis­so­cia­tive anaes­the­sia and can lead to a trance-like state pro­vid­ing pain re­lief, se­da­tion, and am­ne­sia.

Three oth­er Chi­nese na­tion­als, two men aged 38 and 29, and a 27-year-old woman who were found at the premis­es were al­so ar­rest­ed.

Ketamine found in Trincity.

TTPS

Po­lice re­vealed that they were in the coun­try il­le­gal­ly and the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion is con­duct­ing in­quiries.

Two days af­ter the ar­rest, an Ari­ma mag­is­trate grant­ed a de­ten­tion or­der for the quan­ti­ty of cash seized at the premis­es, pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act.

Com­ment­ing on the ar­rest, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob said on Sat­ur­day that “street ban­dits” are hired to do the nasty work lo­cal­ly for high-pay­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions.

And in a bid to con­tin­ue its work to dis­man­tle op­er­a­tions from the top and re­duce the num­ber of gang-re­lat­ed killings which are in­ter­con­nect­ed, Ja­cob said, “We are con­cen­trat­ing more now on the top be­cause we want to cut the mon­ey train to fu­el gangs and get il­le­gal guns off the streets in T&T.”