Postby yrkwstcttbh » December 3rd, 2016, 9:44 am
Cops and customs eyeing contractor
DAYS after customs officials seized US$2 million hidden in plyboard at the Point Lisas Port, they searched the business place of a contractor in northeast Trinidad and confiscated computer hard drives, shipping documents and CCTV footage to investigate a possible link to the smuggled foreign currency.
The exercise was conducted with the assistance of police, who executed a search warrant at the business place on November 22, after the US currency was discovered at the port on November 4.
Customs and police sources say there is growing evidence the contractor is linked to a US$5 million (about TT$34 million) shipment of cocaine stuffed in crocus bags on a yacht.
The US Coast Guard intercepted the yacht in July in the Caribbean Sea and arrested two Trinidadian nationals on board—Neil Jason Merritt and Beon Phillip.
Authorities are hoping the documents they recovered at the business place will help them in their investigations.
They also hope viewing the CCTV footage will help identify people who visited the business place following the discovery of the money at the port.
Merritt and Phillip set sail aboard the vessel Buff in late June, allegedly to deliver the cocaine shipment, along with a third Trinidadian, whose identity the United States-based Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has withheld.
The FBI told the Express last week both men are facing charges of possession with intent to distribute cocaine and are being held at the Pinellas County Jail in Tampa, Florida.
They are awaiting trial.
Officials involved
A customs official close to the investigation shed further light on the activities of the contractor in question and the alleged complicity of “certain customs and other law enforcement officers”.
The senior source disclosed that “the day the flatbed trailer arrived from the US Virgin Islands (November 4) with the US money, it was flagged by a customs guard on duty who believed the stamps and signatures on the bill of lading looked irregular.
“Had it not been for his keen observation that container would have gone unnoticed,” the source said.
The smuggled money, according to an intelligence source, was to repay a Venezuelan drug dealer after the US$5 million drug shipment destined for Florida was seized by US authorities.
The customs source hinted that a senior official from Port of Spain who was complicit with the operation was expected to come to the port that day and ensure the shipment went through without any hiccups.
“But for some strange reason information reaching us was that he never came and now his life is being threatened. There are a few of them doing underhanded things and living above their means,” he said.
The source claimed Interpol has been keeping tabs on a former customs official who they believe helped facilitate a shipment of cocaine in juice cans discovered at a port in Virginia, USA in December 2013.
To date, the case remains an active investigation by US authorities.
Another container
The source also informed the Express that the day before the US money find at Point Lisas, another container shipped by the same contractor from the US Virgin Islands arrived on the port, then disappeared, but was later found abandoned in the Carlsen Field area in Central Trinidad.
“The bill of lading for that company was for a music store and we were told that the container had sub-woofer speakers with what we believe were stacks of foreign currency hidden inside,” he explained.
The sub-woofer speakers with the money concealed, insiders say, were offloaded onto a truck and later delivered to the business place of the contractor.
To date, no one has been able to say how much money may have been smuggled in that container or where the money went.
“We have noticed that there is a particular trend emerging where these smugglers are using legitimate companies and items consistent with these companies to smuggle in their contraband. So, for example, if they using a hardware company they will bring in hardware supplies,” the source said.
Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi, responding to the exclusive Express story yesterday on the US$2 million find and the use of forged documents to transact illegal business, said: “The Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Legal Affairs has been aggressively pursuing to weed out of the Companies Registry and the tie-in of user information across the platform to eliminate fraud and use of companies which are either defunct or attempts to fraudulently portray one company as another by use of similar names.”
AG: Laws to
address corruption
He said there was a “very aggressive sweep of legislation that is nearly perfected which is going to address the corruption and fraud issues in a major way.”
Intelligence sources also informed the Express that customs officials conducted an operation in early November, in which 100 kilogrammes of cocaine, with a street value of $20 million, were seized at the wharf in Port of Spain aboard a vessel also belonging to the contractor in question.
The cocaine was hidden under layers of tiles bound for the US Virgin Islands, with its final destination believed to be Florida.
Insiders familiar with the cocaine find at the Port of Spain port told the Express the captain and crew were interrogated and later released pending further investigations.
Sources say the contractor had been arrested in 2004 on a drug-related charge which was thrown out by the courts.
He was also involved in organising a party for a Government official last year, sources said.
