Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 24-year-old Chi­nese na­tion­al, who has been re­sid­ing in T&T for over a decade, has been grant­ed $100,000 af­ter ap­pear­ing in court charged with metham­phet­a­mine traf­fick­ing.

Hong Fei Wu was grant­ed bail by Mag­is­trate Armi­na De­onar­i­nesingh af­ter ap­pear­ing be­fore her yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Wu was ar­rest­ed last Thurs­day af­ter Spe­cial Branch po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at an apart­ment in the Res­i­dences at South Park in Tarou­ba.

The of­fi­cers al­leged­ly found 540 grammes of the il­le­gal drug in 23 Zi­plock bags in the apart­ment and in Wu’s car.

They al­so found chem­i­cals and equip­ment sus­pect­ed to be used in the man­u­fac­ture of the il­le­gal syn­thet­ic drug that is pop­u­lar in the Unit­ed States but rel­a­tive­ly un­known in T&T com­pared to co­caine and MD­MA.

A quan­ti­ty of cash and elec­tron­ics, in­clud­ing cell phones, tablets and drones, were al­so seized by po­lice.

Wu was not called up­on to plead to the drug traf­fick­ing charge, as po­lice pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Ger­vais said the case will be pros­e­cut­ed in­dictably (be­fore a judge and ju­ry or a judge alone).

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Sgt Ger­vais and the po­lice of­fi­cer who laid the charge against Wu were asked to show the seized items to Wu, who was par­tic­i­pat­ing in the vir­tu­al hear­ing from the hold­ing cells at the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion.

While Sgt Ger­vais showed the 11 pack­ages of the drug that were al­leged­ly found in Wu’s car, he in­di­cat­ed that the 12 pack­ages of the drug that were found in the apart­ment were al­ready sent to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James for test­ing.

The po­si­tion was chal­lenged by Wu’s lawyer Lar­ry Williams, who said that il­le­gal drugs are usu­al­ly on­ly sent for test­ing af­ter an ac­cused per­son makes their first court ap­pear­ance.

“It is pass­ing strange that the cen­tre has the ex­hibits be­fore it is shown to the ac­cused. We should have the rest to at least see them,” Williams said.

Sgt Ger­vais said the oth­er ex­hibits were hand­ed over to of­fi­cials of the cen­tre, as they were in­volved in the raid and did pre­lim­i­nary tests on the drugs.

In ap­ply­ing for bail for Wu, Williams said his client is a res­i­dent of T&T, moved here when he was 12 years old and at­tend­ed Ves­signy Sec­ondary School.

He added that Wu, who was em­ployed by a com­pa­ny that man­u­fac­tures dog food, had a clean crim­i­nal record.

While Sgt Ger­vais did not ob­ject to Wu be­ing grant­ed bail, he raised con­cerns over his ad­dress.

He point­ed out that while Wu claimed to have lived in Gulf View, ev­i­dence gath­ered by in­ves­ti­ga­tors sug­gest­ed that he resided at the apart­ment where the drugs were found.

Mag­is­trate De­onar­i­nesingh agreed, as she re­quest­ed that he pro­vide the proof be­fore be­ing able to ac­cess bail. She al­so or­dered that the per­son who will serve as the sure­ty for Wu’s bail pro­vide proof of their ad­dress and oth­er ver­i­fi­able con­tact in­for­ma­tion.

“When I is­sue war­rants or sum­mons, I must know where they are go­ing,” Mag­is­trate De­onar­i­nesingh said.

She al­so or­dered the po­lice to sur­ren­der Wu’s Chi­nese pass­port, which was seized dur­ing the raid, to the court.

Wu is sched­uled to reap­pear in court on Sep­tem­ber 12.

He was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Toni Roberts.