Derek Achong

A 30-year-old Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Cor­po­ra­tion (TTPost) couri­er ac­cused of at­tempt­ing to traf­fic co­caine to Eu­rope by post was yes­ter­day grant­ed bail in the sum of $300,000. Leon Lewis, of Sto­er Dri­ve, Morne Co­co Road, Pe­tit Val­ley plead­ed not guilty to four drug re­lat­ed of­fences when he made his ap­pear­ance be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Cheryl-Ann Blake in the Port-of-Spain Fourth A Mag­is­trate's Court.

Lewis was charged by of­fi­cers of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion with at­tempt­ing to ex­port a dan­ger­ous drug and pos­ses­sion of co­caine for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing. Lewis was ar­rest­ed, last week, by the of­fi­cers in con­nec­tion with two pack­ages bound for Spain which were in­ter­cept­ed by lo­cal au­thor­i­ties on Jan­u­ary 27 and Feb­ru­ary 6. Dur­ing his ap­pear­ance yes­ter­day, Lewis' at­tor­ney Criston J Williams told the court that his client had been em­ployed with the cor­po­ra­tion for the past 12 years. It was al­leged that the pack­ages were sent from the Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain branch of the cor­po­ra­tion where Lewis was at­tached at the time.

One of the pack­ages al­leged­ly con­tained 234 grammes of co­caine hid­den in a bag con­tain­ing crick­et equip­ment, while the oth­er con­tained 632 grammes of the il­le­gal drug con­cealed in a vac­u­um clean­er. The to­tal street val­ue of the drugs was put at $400,000. In grant­i­ng Lewis bail which had to be ap­proved by a Clerk of the Peace, Blake or­dered that he re­port to the West End po­lice sta­tion, three times a week. Lewis will reap­pear in court on March 9.