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Friday, July 11, 2025

Co­caine hid­den in juice, soft drink load

CoP mum on DEA cocaine probe

by

20140122

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams yes­ter­day re­fused to com­ment on the on­go­ing probe by Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DEA) and lo­cal law en­force­ment of­fi­cials in­to the re­cent TT$644 mil­lion co­caine haul in the Unit­ed States.

Asked about the state of the sta­tus of the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort dur­ing the week­ly po­lice press brief­ing, Williams said: "I am not in a po­si­tion to com­ment on that in­ves­ti­ga­tion. As soon as I am in a po­si­tion I will re­veal to the me­dia all I can re­veal. At this point in time I am not in a po­si­tion to com­ment on that in­ves­ti­ga­tion."Pressed fur­ther, he added: "I can­not com­ment at all on that at this time."He al­so made it clear that no of­fi­cial from the Po­lice Ser­vice had made any com­ment on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Asked about se­cu­ri­ty for con­tain­ers at the coun­try's ports, Williams said: "The TTPS con­tin­ues to make the clear po­si­tion it is crit­i­cal that we have an im­proved sys­tem of se­cur­ing and it is not lim­it­ed to le­gal port of en­tires. I have made rec­om­men­da­tions on how we can se­cure our bor­ders and pub­licly stat­ed those at oth­er fo­rums."

Williams's com­ments came even as fur­ther T&T Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tions yes­ter­day re­vealed that the il­le­gal car­go ini­tial­ly seized by Unit­ed States Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion of­fi­cers was hid­den among not on­ly 1,600 cas­es of Trinidad Juices (800 each of or­ange and grape­fruit) but al­so 700 cas­es of Ap­ple J soft drinks.In all, 2,300 cas­es of juices and soft drinks were used to hide the over 700 tins of juices which stored the co­caine.

A search for the com­pa­nies be­hind the ship­ment al­so re­vealed not on­ly de­funct en­ti­ties but fic­ti­tious peo­ple be­hind them as well and peo­ple on both sides as­sist­ing in a well or­gan­ised trans-na­tion­al drug ring.SM Jaleel has main­tained it played no part in ship­ping of the drugs and said on Tues­day an in­ter­nal ex­am­i­na­tion had showed the la­bels on the cans were fake.

Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter yes­ter­day, Hay­den Charles, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Joseph Charles Bot­tling Works and Trans­port Lim­it­ed, whose com­pa­ny man­u­fac­tur­ers Ap­ple J, an award-win­ning brand, said it was the first time he was hear­ing of his prod­ucts be­ing found in the con­tain­er."This is news to me. I am sur­prised by this," Charles said.He said, how­ev­er, that the soft drinks could have end­ed up in the con­tain­er via sev­er­al means and were not nec­es­sar­i­ly bought di­rect­ly from the com­pa­ny.

Say­ing the Christ­mas sea­son was nor­mal­ly very hec­tic, Charles added: "Dur­ing that time we have quite a num­ber of whole­salers com­ing to buy goods and one whole­saler could eas­i­ly buy that num­ber of cas­es and more."He said he be­lieved it would be eas­i­er to pur­chase the cas­es as whole­salers rather than di­rect­ly from the com­pa­ny as that would make it more dif­fi­cult to pick up a pa­per trail.He said it was un­for­tu­nate that SM Jaleel had been forced to de­fend its good name as "it could hap­pen to any­one."

...Cus­toms clerk acts as bro­ker

An emp­ty 20-foot con­tain­er was sourced, via a bro­ker, who then con­tact­ed lo­cal trans­port com­pa­ny, Ba­sics Trans­port Lim­it­ed, to trans­port it to be stuffed and car­ry it to the Port of Port-of-Spain on be­half of Caribbean Sea Works Ltd, the T&T Guardian learned yes­ter­day.Di­rec­tor of Ba­sics Trans­port Ltd, Apol­lo Ar­joon, said for the past three years he had been do­ing work for Caribbean Sea Works Ltd through a bro­ker but main­tained that dur­ing that time he did not know the own­er or di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny.

A source close to the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion yes­ter­day said it was not a bro­ker, how­ev­er, but rather a cus­toms clerk hold­ing the rank of ei­ther a grade two or three who had been di­rect­ly sign­ing doc­u­ments for Caribbean Sea Works Ltd.The source said the clerk would en­sure doc­u­ments could go through eas­i­ly with­out be­ing flagged.A for­mer em­ploy­ee of Caribbean Sea Works Ltd, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said yes­ter­day the com­pa­ny was in­to ma­rine con­struc­tion and had been de­funct for years.

The for­mer em­ploy­ee said three years be­fore O'Sul­li­van died a man be­gan do­ing work for the com­pa­ny."He ba­si­cal­ly kept to him­self and no one re­al­ly knew any­thing about him. What is in­ter­est­ing in this whole thing is that on­ly very few peo­ple work­ing at the com­pa­ny would know about the name Caribbean Sea Works be­cause that was the name the own­er used to do busi­ness abroad and that was not on many oc­ca­sions," he said.

"In most in­stances he used the name Sea Works Ltd as he did many lo­cal projects, in­clud­ing for the gov­ern­ment at the time, like build­ing jet­ties," the for­mer em­ploy­ee added.The ship­ment was sent to a trad­ing com­pa­ny in Vir­ginia which seems to ex­ist on pa­per on­ly and to a con­signee who al­so ap­pears to have been a "ghost."


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