Po­lice say they made a ma­jor mar­i­jua­na seizure worth $47 mil­lion fol­low­ing an in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion con­duct­ed by the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion on Wednes­day.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice said of­fi­cers of the SIU ex­e­cut­ed the ex­er­cise be­tween 1 pm and 4.30 pm un­der the lead­er­ship of Snr Supt Ed­wards, Supt Eti­enne, ASP Lynch and ASP Morales, with sup­port from the In­ter-Agency Task Force. The op­er­a­tion was based on ac­tion­able in­tel­li­gence.

Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers searched a res­i­dence in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tion, 2025. Po­lice said the search un­cov­ered 10 cro­cus bags and five garbage bags con­tain­ing cannabis. The drugs were lat­er weighed at 413.68 kilo­grammes and val­ued at $47,687,266.44.

The on-site search was su­per­vised by In­sp Nixon and In­sp Am­mon. Two men were tak­en in­to cus­tody in con­nec­tion with the dis­cov­ery.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro com­mend­ed the SIU and sup­port­ing units, not­ing the co­or­di­nat­ed ef­fort in­volved in the op­er­a­tion. He said the seizure fol­lowed an­oth­er ex­er­cise hours ear­li­er in which $4.4 mil­lion worth of cannabis was re­cov­ered.

The Com­mis­sion­er said the work of the SIU con­tin­ues to dis­rupt drug-traf­fick­ing ac­tiv­i­ty across Trinidad and To­ba­go as the po­lice main­tain their fo­cus on op­er­a­tions based on in­tel­li­gence and in­ter-unit co­op­er­a­tion.

Mean­while, po­lice seized co­caine val­ued at more than $16 mil­lion and ar­rest­ed two women dur­ing an op­er­a­tion at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Mon­day.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit were con­duct­ing du­ties at the air­port around 2.57 pm, fo­cus­ing on pas­sen­gers sched­uled to board a flight to Frank­furt, Ger­many. Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, WPC Pope stopped a 27-year-old woman from Darceuil Lane, Ari­ma, and searched her lug­gage. Of­fi­cers said six box­es of cake mix were found with co­caine con­cealed in­side.

Po­lice said a sec­ond pas­sen­ger, a 20-year-old woman from Ari­ma By­pass, Ari­ma, was al­so ques­tioned. A search of her lug­gage re­vealed five box­es pack­aged in the same way, each con­tain­ing co­caine.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the pack­ages weighed 6.385 kilo­grammes and 5.372 kilo­grammes, with a to­tal of 11.757 kilo­grammes. The co­caine has an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $16,388,564.