Geisha Kow­lessar

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers yes­ter­day linked the week­end's seizure of US$2 mil­lion in a con­tain­er by mem­bers of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion to the ne­far­i­ous nar­cotics trade.The mon­ey, which was hid­den in a crate of ply board and shipped to Trinidad ear­li­er in the week, was found last Fri­day at the Pt Lisas Port.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers said yes­ter­day they be­lieve be­cause of the amount of cash in­volved, it may by pay­ment for drug/guns deal.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who did not con­firm or de­ny there was a drug link in the seizure, said the mat­ter was un­der in­tense in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

"I would not an­swer these spe­cif­ic ques­tions. Let's just say I am very grate­ful the cash was found and ac­tion is be­ing tak­en," Al-Rawi told the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view. He said the probe was tak­ing place "across all en­ti­ties of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry," but main­tained that it was pre­ma­ture to give de­tails.

"The cash is just one as­pect of a larg­er pic­ture, but the coun­try can be as­sured there are a range of laws to treat with it, in­clud­ing the Cus­toms Act, the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, in par­tic­u­lar, and the mat­ter is be­ing ad­dressed with­in the four cor­ners of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and al­so the leg­is­la­tion."

In a press state­ment over the week­end, the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Plipde­co) said Cus­toms and port of­fi­cials, as part of their nor­mal op­er­at­ing pro­to­col, sent a flat rack con­tain­ing ply board to the Point Lisas Con­tain­er Ex­am­i­na­tion Sta­tion (CES) for fur­ther re­view.

"At the CES, the con­tents of the flat rack were checked by a joint Cus­toms and po­lice team and ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2 mil­lion in Unit­ed States cur­ren­cy was dis­cov­ered. The car­go ar­rived in Trinidad on Wednes­day, No­vem­ber 2, aboard one of Plipde­co's sched­uled con­tain­er car­ri­ers."

On the specifics of the law which could be ap­plied, Al-Rawi said it would be­gin with the de­c­la­ra­tion as stat­ed in the Cus­toms Act and al­so the abil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to for­feit that which could not be ex­plained.

"This par­tic­u­lar in­ves­ti­ga­tion al­so in­clud­ed the fact that there are false pa­pers in the de­c­la­ra­tion. It is a host of po­si­tions; too wide to just pin­point any one law. What we re­al­ly are in­ter­est­ed in is the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the im­por­ta­tion be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly that is the crux of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Hence why par­tic­u­lars can not be giv­en as yet.

"But you ob­vi­ous­ly can bring in mon­ey if you de­clare mon­ey, but no one brings in mon­ey to the tune of US$2 mil­lion," Al-Rawi said.

The mat­ter, the AG added, al­so has a sig­nif­i­cant amount of "in­ter­sec­tion" in­to the Gov­ern­ment's fo­cus in the fight against crime, es­pe­cial­ly "fol­low­ing the mon­ey" as a means to nab mon­ey laun­der­ers and drug traf­fick­ers.

"All crimes, in our view, can be re­duced to the com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor of cash and trans­ac­tions and mon­ey in its var­i­ous forms, whether or not it is held in as­sets or oth­er­wise. Our fo­cus is square­ly on that," Al-Rawi said.

"You cer­tain­ly do not im­port cash in a con­tain­er un­less you are the Cen­tral Bank and you're im­port­ing new cur­ren­cy notes which you or­dered from abroad."

Say­ing this coun­try's bor­ders were left un­pro­tect­ed for a very long time, he said with­in re­cent times there has been an in­crease in drug seizures of the seas.

Why no sting op­er­a­tion?

But for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said he was baf­fled by the fact that law en­force­ment of­fi­cials did not con­duct a sting op­er­a­tion to de­ter­mine who was be­hind the im­por­ta­tion of the cash.

"We need to think out­side the box in our law en­force­ment strat­e­gy rather than do the search, find the mon­ey and just take it," Grif­fith said.

"The mon­ey could have been left there; and the law en­force­ment could have found out who was ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to col­lect it. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this might just be a sit­u­a­tion where we ac­quire il­le­gal weapons, drugs and US$2 mil­lion and not be able to pin­point the per­pe­tra­tors of the crime. Get­ting the cash is of lit­tle val­ue if the in­di­vid­u­als in­stru­men­tal in caus­ing this crime are not be ap­pre­hend­ed."

Grif­fith added that the op­er­a­tions of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre had been "vir­tu­al­ly wa­tered down" by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon.

"Had this cen­tre been an in­de­pen­dent body and not be­ing squeezed un­der the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA)–now a tooth­less bull­dog–some­body there would have had the au­thor­i­ty to di­rect the po­lice and Cus­toms to back off, leave the cash and ob­serve what was go­ing to hap­pen," Grif­fith said.

Say­ing in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing was key, Grif­fith called on the SSA to play a more piv­otal role.

"We don't have un­der­cov­er covert op­er­a­tives. We need in­di­vid­u­als who need to go deep in­to the un­der­world and be­come the main el­e­ment to get in­tel­li­gence. That is what the SSA should be do­ing. They need some pow­er­ful in­jec­tion to get in­volved."

He said the is­sue al­so un­der­scored the need to take T&T out of "this di­nosaur era" where the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion was still un­der the Fi­nance Min­istry as op­posed to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.

"That would play a very big part to­wards that co­he­sion and shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion in re­al time as well as prop­er train­ing. Cus­toms is more val­ue to our coun­try in se­cur­ing our bor­ders than be­ing a rev­enue earn­er," Grif­fith said.

On whether the mon­ey was linked to drugs, Grif­fith said it would be fool­hardy to be­lieve this, as there could be sev­er­al rea­sons, in­clud­ing pay­ment for il­le­gal weapons or trans­ship­ment to an­oth­er coun­try.

Say­ing or­gan­ised crim­i­nals were be­com­ing more em­bold­ened in their ef­forts, Grif­fith said this was be­cause there were no more checks and bal­ances, no mea­sure­ment of per­for­mance and no ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, chief im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer Char­maine Gand­hi-An­drews said they would on­ly play a role if a for­eign na­tion­al was im­pli­cat­ed, re­sult­ing in pros­e­cu­tion.

HIGH-PRO­FILE BUSTS

A de­funct com­pa­ny, which was nev­er re­moved from the Com­pa­nies Reg­is­ter, was used as a cov­er to ship $640 mil­lion in liq­uid co­caine, stored in juice tins, to the Unit­ed States in De­cem­ber 2013.Al-Rawi had made this dis­clo­sure as he un­der­scored the im­por­tance of civ­il as­set for­fei­ture leg­is­la­tion.

In Sep­tem­ber 2011 a search of a 40-foot con­tain­er Pt Lisas Port al­so re­sult­ed in the seizure of high-grade Ari­zona mar­i­jua­na with an street val­ue of $7.4 mil­lion.The mar­i­jua­na, be­lieved to have been brought in from the Unit­ed States, was wrapped in plas­tic and tucked in­to white cro­cus bags and hid­den among chick­ens.

A promi­nent busi­ness­man of cen­tral Trinidad, to whom the con­tain­er had been as­signed, had been as­sist­ing po­lice with the in­ves­ti­ga­tions. But po­lice said there was very lit­tle head­way made in that par­tic­u­lar case as there was no con­crete ev­i­dence to link any­one to the in­ci­dent.

"All we have had was just spec­u­la­tion and cir­cum­stan­tial ev­i­dence which would not hold up in court. But it does not mean the case is closed," one of­fi­cer said.