Of­fi­cers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) fin­ished count­ing the mon­ey they seized in their sec­ond raid at the Drugs Sou-Sou head­quar­ters in La Hor­quet­ta on Tues­day, mere hours af­ter it was seized in an ex­er­cise that in­clud­ed of­fi­cers of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB).

The fi­nal count on the seized mon­ey was $6.4 mil­lion, po­lice sources told Guardian Me­dia.

The fig­ure was con­firmed by Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob dur­ing a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. Ja­cob said the po­lice were en­ti­tled, un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, to hold the mon­ey for at least 96 hours from the time it was seized to en­sure whether it was ob­tained law­ful­ly. If this is not done in this spe­cif­ic time frame, in­ves­ti­ga­tors can ap­proach the court for a de­ten­tion or­der to hold the mon­ey for a longer pe­ri­od, once it is jus­ti­fied or they may have to re­turn the mon­ey to its own­er, he said.

Dur­ing the sec­ond DSS raid on Tues­day, PSB of­fi­cers al­so seized hun­dreds of re­ceipt books, doc­u­ments con­tain­ing line pay­ments to thou­sands of in­di­vid­u­als and oth­er per­ti­nent doc­u­ments that could as­sist in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

The raid was co­or­di­nat­ed with the help of the Ba­jan in­ves­ti­ga­tors and UK in­ves­ti­ga­tors who came in­to the coun­try to as­sist in the probe, Mc Don­ald Ja­cob said.

The DSS was first raid­ed on Sep­tem­ber 21 by of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) and some $22 mil­lion was tak­en to the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion. How­ev­er, the mon­ey, the amount of which was nev­er ver­i­fied be­cause po­lice did not com­plete count­ing the seized cash, was re­leased hours lat­er in­to the hands of DSS own­er Ker­ron Clarke by ju­nior po­lice of­fi­cers from the sta­tion who were not au­tho­rised to do so.

Po­lice are al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing the be­hav­iour of a mem­ber of the T&T De­fence Force who was caught on cam­era dur­ing the first raid stuff­ing mon­ey in­to his tac­ti­cal uni­form. The FIB is al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing the source of DSS funds.

At least four of­fi­cers have been sus­pend­ed and 10 oth­ers trans­ferred to oth­er di­vi­sions as the probe con­tin­ues. See page 5