Ak­ile Si­mon

A 48-year-old Cou­va busi­ness­man is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a Cou­va mag­is­trate to­day, charged with pos­ses­sion of close to $1m worth of goods stolen from Ansa McAl's Ch­agua­nas ware­house. The sus­pect, a Guyanese na­tion­al liv­ing in this coun­try, was de­tained along with his Guyanese wife and 17-year-old step­daugh­ter at their Cou­va home by po­lice. On Fri­day af­ter­noon, po­lice from the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force, Rob­bery Squad, Ch­agua­nas, and Cou­va CID, in com­pa­ny with Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cers, raid­ed the man's home, and al­leged­ly found the items. Ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cers, a con­tain­er with house­hold items was stolen from Ansa's com­pound last Ju­ly.

The in­ci­dent was record­ed on sur­veil­lance cam­eras on the com­pound, po­lice said. Around 2pm last Fri­day, of­fi­cers armed with a search war­rant went to the busi­ness­man's home and ware­house and con­duct­ed sev­er­al search­es. The items were al­leged­ly found in four sep­a­rate store­rooms, po­lice said. The sus­pect re­port­ed­ly told of­fi­cers that he pur­chased the goods for $10,000 from an­oth­er man. The busi­ness­man op­er­ates a whole­sale dry goods busi­ness at his home.

Po­lice be­lieved af­ter the con­tain­er was stolen, it was trans­port­ed di­rect­ly to the busi­ness­man's com­pound. The re­cov­ered items were pho­tographed and re­turned to Ansa McAl. Two per­sons were ar­rest­ed pre­vi­ous­ly in the Ari­ma dis­trict in con­nec­tion with the same in­ci­dent, po­lice said. Of­fi­cers in­volved in the ex­er­cise in­clud­ed In­sp Green­wich, Sgt Nor­bie, Cpls Ran­som, An­drews, and PCs Dick­son, Be­har­ris, For­ge­nie, Smith and Rodikissoon.