Derek Achong

A po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to yet an­oth­er fu­el bunker­ing scam, this time in the north-east Trinidad fish­ing vil­lage of Matu­ra. The so­phis­ti­cat­ed op­er­a­tion was un­know­ing­ly un­earthed by a group of po­lice of­fi­cers who were on pa­trol last Tues­day night.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 7 pm, the po­lice, led by ASP Neville "To­co Bur­roughs" Sankar, no­ticed that a dump truck which was try­ing to leave the beach fa­cil­i­ty had got in­to dif­fi­cul­ties. When the po­lice went to help, they saw two men run­ning away, which made them sus­pi­cious. The of­fi­cers man­aged to de­tain two men who were in the truck, but the two sus­pects who ran away evad­ed them.

A lat­er search of the truck re­vealed two 1,000-gal­lon tanks con­tain­ing diesel, which were cam­ou­flaged with a large pile of rub­ble. The po­lice al­so found large rub­ber hoses con­nect­ed to the truck, which led to sev­er­al large tanks con­tain­ing diesel which were buried on the beach.

Both sus­pects, who were said to be in their 30s and from south Trinidad, were de­tained by po­lice. Staff from the Min­istry of En­er­gy were con­tact­ed and are as­sist­ing in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Sev­er­al sim­i­lar il­le­gal bunker­ing op­er­a­tions were foiled by po­lice dur­ing last year's state of emer­gency. Sgts Dar­ren Bap­tiste and Prakash Ma­haraj are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.