Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

Drug Sou Sou of­fi­cials have record­ings of at least two con­ver­sa­tions with a high-rank­ing po­lice of­fi­cer in which a deal was bro­kered to se­cure the re­turn of some $92 mil­lion that was seized by the po­lice, mi­nus $18 mil­lion that was paid as hush mon­ey to the of­fi­cers who or­gan­ised mon­ey’s re­turn.

The DSS source said in cru­cial tele­phone record­ings Guardian Me­dia were in­formed about, DSS per­son­nel told the high-rank­ing of­fi­cer, “that there was a large sum of mon­ey not record­ed in the re­ceipts and the per­son in­formed the po­lice of­fi­cer there was ac­tu­al­ly $92 mil­lion.”

There was a sec­ond tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion, the DSS source said, in which the high-rank­ing of­fi­cer struck a deal to en­sure that $74 mil­lion was re­turned and the oth­er $18m was to be split be­tween law en­force­ment per­son­nel in­volved in the DSS op­er­a­tion and oth­ers they co-opt­ed to re­trieve the seized mon­ey.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said af­ter speak­ing with sev­er­al in­ter­nal sources of his own, he was now con­vinced that the sum he was in­formed about up to mid­night on that Tues­day was close to $22m but not­ed he felt that was nev­er the fi­nal amount. He even be­lieves that he might have been mis­led by of­fi­cers in­volved in the act.

The $22m fig­ure was giv­en to him by of­fi­cers at­tached to SORT, who lat­er left the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion with Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) of­fi­cers, while North­ern Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers re­mained at the sta­tion to con­tin­ue the count.

Grif­fith said he was al­so ques­tion­ing the count­ing of that quan­ti­ty of mon­ey in such a short space of time be­tween 8.30 pm and mid­night. To him, there was some­thing amiss about this process.

Yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said he was con­vinced there was far more mon­ey tak­en to the sta­tion than what was ini­tial­ly re­port­ed to the me­dia.

“Based on in­for­ma­tion com­ing to hand and my in­tel­li­gence sources, it can­not be con­firmed that is was $22,157,000 mil­lion as claimed by the of­fi­cers. It is vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble for us to ver­i­fy that at this time,” Grif­fith said.

He said three par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tions are now tak­ing place in­to the mat­ter, which in­clud­ed, “the $22 mil­lion via the source of funds, tax­es et cetera, the of­fi­cers who re­turned the funds and the of­fi­cer who put the en­ve­lope in his pock­et.”

While the po­lice are con­tin­u­ing their probe, the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) fi­nal­ly broke its si­lence yes­ter­day, two days af­ter a Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive sto­ry fin­gered mem­bers of the TTDF as be­ing in­volved in the DSS op­er­a­tions and help­ing to trans­port the mon­ey to a house in Tal­paro and then to a for­ti­fied state lo­ca­tion for safe­keep­ing.

The TTDF ac­knowl­edged that they were “ful­ly co-op­er­at­ing with the TTPS in the DSS in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

A re­lease al­so said, “The TTDF has launched an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the pos­si­ble in­volve­ment and al­leged mis­con­duct of De­fence Force mem­bers.”

The Sun­day Guardian had sent sev­er­al ques­tions to var­i­ous TTDF com­mu­ni­ca­tions per­son­nel, in­clud­ing PRO Lieu­tenant Sheron Man­swell, ask­ing spe­cif­ic ques­tions.

The TTDF’s re­sponse yes­ter­day was rather gen­er­al and they steered clear of an­swer­ing spe­cif­ic ques­tions Guardian Me­dia had posed to them.

LATT wants probe in­to war­rant

Mean­while, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) has urged the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to al­so open an­oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion or in­clude, as part of his on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion, whether there was a le­gal re­quire­ment to ob­tain a war­rant be­fore the search on the DSS was ini­ti­at­ed.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, LATT said a war­rant ob­tained af­ter a search has start­ed does not le­galise what has al­ready oc­curred.

LATT added, “The pri­va­cy of a cit­i­zen’s premis­es is pro­tect­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion and ought on­ly to be vi­o­lat­ed when car­ried out strict­ly in ac­cor­dance with the law. The fail­ure to ob­tain a war­rant when re­quired, and the fail­ure to dis­close it when ob­tained, vi­o­lates the Con­sti­tu­tion, on the one hand, and en­gen­ders dis­trust, on the oth­er. As things stand, it re­mains un­clear what of­fence the of­fi­cers lead­ing this raid on pri­vate premis­es sus­pect­ed was be­ing or had been com­mit­ted and what were the con­sid­er­a­tions that led to the re­turn of cash seized.”

LATT al­so sup­port­ed Grif­fith’s stance to in­ves­ti­gate the re­turn of the mon­ey from the DSS raid and al­so urged him to do a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the of­fi­cer, “seem­ing­ly stuff­ing cash in­to his ap­par­el.”

“The Com­mis­sion­er has made the state­ment that the in­di­vid­ual is a mem­ber of the De­fence Force and not the Po­lice Ser­vice. Whether that is or is not the case, the Com­mis­sion­er ought not to be­labour the point lest it ap­pear that he is shirk­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­duct of an in­di­vid­ual car­ry­ing out a search as part of a unit un­der his com­mand,” LATT said.

They al­so ap­pealed to Grif­fith to ad­dress con­cerns high­light­ed in video record­ings of the raid­ing unit al­leged­ly phys­i­cal­ly abus­ing oc­cu­pants dur­ing the search of the premis­es.

LATT said, “Ex­cept in nec­es­sary self-de­fence or to im­pede es­cape or where the po­lice are be­ing ob­struct­ed in the per­for­mance of their du­ties, there is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for phys­i­cal abuse on the part of any mem­ber of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.”