Au­thor­i­ties in­ter­cept­ed a ves­sel off the Point Fortin coast­line ear­ly Fri­day, seiz­ing over $29 mil­lion worth of high-grade cannabis. The op­er­a­tion fol­lowed in­tel­li­gence re­ceived on Thurs­day in­di­cat­ing a large con­sign­ment of Colom­bian “Creepy” mar­i­jua­na was be­ing trans­port­ed from Venezuela to Trinidad aboard a fish­ing ves­sel.

Dur­ing the in­ter­cep­tion, sev­er­al large bags were thrown over­board, and three oc­cu­pants es­caped in­to the sea. Two in­di­vid­u­als, a Trinida­di­an and a Latin Amer­i­can, were de­tained, while nine cro­cus bags con­tain­ing 268 pack­ets of cannabis—to­tal­ing 268 kilo­grams—were re­cov­ered. The seized drugs have an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $29,412,196.

The de­tained sus­pects, ves­sel, and nar­cotics were tak­en to Staubles Bay for fur­ther en­quiries, and a search con­tin­ues for the three fugi­tives. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

Au­thor­i­ties said the op­er­a­tion high­lights the ef­fec­tive­ness of in­tel­li­gence-led col­lab­o­ra­tion with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to com­bat transna­tion­al crime and pro­tect Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bor­ders.