Spe­cial­ist po­lice pros­e­cu­tors from abroad were qui­et­ly ush­ered in­to this coun­try last year to help form a se­cret, yet-to-be named unit of in­ves­ti­ga­tors prepar­ing ma­jor cor­rup­tion cas­es.

The de­ten­tions of for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and UNC Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen are said to be just two of sev­er­al com­plex cas­es in­volv­ing high pro­file per­son­al­i­ties on both sides of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide, ac­cord­ing to two high-lev­el sources who spoke with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

The sources said these cas­es should be brought to a close soon thanks to months of work by this spe­cial po­lice unit. To strength­en its abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly pros­e­cute these cas­es, the TTPS looked to the UK to re­cruit a spe­cial­ist firm of crim­i­nal at­tor­neys. The at­tor­neys were of­fi­cial­ly made mem­bers of the po­lice ser­vice last Sep­tem­ber.

For­mer mem­bers of the Se­ri­ous Fraud Of­fice in the UK, who have spent most of their ca­reers pros­e­cut­ing com­plex fraud and cor­rup­tion cas­es, were al­so brought in­to T&T to be part of the spe­cial unit. It took a team of more than two dozen foren­sic of­fi­cers, who are housed at Tow­er C at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain, to bring the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to this stage, the sources told Guardian Me­dia.

Some 32 foren­sic of­fi­cers from De­loitte and Touche, who al­so worked on the Cli­co in­ves­ti­ga­tion, are al­so part of the team.

“Peo­ple who have cor­rupt ways should be wor­ried. The rest of the work that is com­ing is very close at hand,” an in­formed source told Guardian Me­dia.

The unit is said to be prop­er­ly vet­ted, with all mem­bers be­ing “poly­graphed and test­ed.”

Mean­while, Pamela El­der, SC, who is rep­re­sent­ing Ram­lo­gan, is ques­tion­ing the po­lice’s con­duct in the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions against him.

In a brief in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia as her client’s home in south Trinidad was be­ing searched by de­tec­tives of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau (ACIB), El­der de­scribed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion as fum­bling and floun­der­ing.

She said: “You don’t ar­rest a man and 14 hours lat­er you search his home. Com­mon sense will tell you that you should have had the ev­i­dence in hand be­fore you ar­rest­ed him.”

El­der al­so com­plained over the fact that in­ves­ti­ga­tors had not in­ter­ro­gat­ed Ram­lo­gan up to that time, al­though he was de­tained while at­tempt­ing to board a flight bound for the British Vir­gin Is­lands (BVI) ear­ly yes­ter­day. She de­scribed the of­fi­cers’ con­duct as op­pres­sive.

“He was ar­rest­ed be­fore sun­rise and it is al­most be­fore sun­set and noth­ing mean­ing­ful has been done. I have been wait­ing all day to rep­re­sent my client on crim­i­nal charges,” she said.