Two for­mer di­rec­tors of Caribbean Sea Works Ltd were part of a com­pa­ny which re­ceived con­tracts from the Gov­ern­ment for the trans­porta­tion of fu­el.Caribbean Sea Works Ltd has been named as the ship­ping com­pa­ny used to ex­port co­caine con­cealed in fruit juice cans orig­i­nat­ing in T&T which was seized by Unit­ed States Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion (CBP) of­fi­cers in Vir­ginia.

The ship­ment, worth $644 mil­lion, was smug­gled in Trinidad Or­ange Juice cans which are man­u­fac­tured by Cit­rus Grow­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion. It was dis­cov­ered at the port of Nor­folk. The drugs were seized on De­cem­ber 20 last year.Kr­is­han­mur­ti Ma­habir, of 3 Cham­roo Branch, Cham­roo Trace, Clax­ton Bay, and Vic­tor Anand Jat­tan of 53 Lyn­don Street, Curepe, were named as di­rec­tors of Caribbean Sea Works Ltd.Jat­tan was re­moved as com­pa­ny di­rec­tor of Caribbean Sea­works in 2007.

Doc­u­ments ob­tained by the T&T Guardian from the reg­is­trar gen­er­al's of­fice show that both Ma­habir and Jat­tan were al­so di­rec­tors of the Pe­tro­le­um Trans­port Com­pa­ny Ltd, which re­ceived con­tracts from the state-owned Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (NP).Jat­tan's name was re­moved from Pe­tro­le­um Trans­port Com­pa­ny Ltd list of di­rec­tors on Oc­to­ber 29 last year.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, a se­nior man­ag­er at NP said Pe­tro­le­um Trans­port Com­pa­ny Ltd was pre­vi­ous­ly named Na­tion­al Trans­port Ltd, and had done "ex­cel­lent work" for NP for a num­ber of years.The man­ag­er ex­plained that when the com­pa­ny was sold, the new own­ers ap­proached NP to reap­ply for the con­tracts be­cause they had a long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ship in the past.

When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the Pe­tro­le­um Trans­port Com­pa­ny Ltd in San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, an em­ploy­ee said Vic­tor Jat­tan had not been seen in a while. Pressed as to when was the last time Jat­tan was seen there, the guard said in De­cem­ber last year.

Rel­a­tives of Jat­tan main­tained that they too had not seen him in "a while." They in­sist­ed Jat­tan was not in touch with his fam­i­ly be­cause "we do not see eye to eye." Asked why there seemed to be a strained re­la­tion­ship, the rel­a­tives said they dis­agreed on a num­ber of is­sues.At­tempts were al­so made to con­tact for­mer di­rec­tors and staff whose names ap­peared on doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to Caribbean Sea Works Ltd, but all ef­forts were un­suc­cess­ful.

In 1995, for­mer House Speak­er Oc­c­ah Sea­paul had ac­cused Jat­tan of de­fraud­ing her of $17,000, but that case was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed in favour of Jat­tan.