SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

 Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says po­lice of­fi­cers are in­volved in the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar La Hor­quet­ta pyra­mid scheme called the Drugs Sou Sou and may even have fa­cil­i­tat­ed the re­turn of mil­lions of dol­lars seized on Tues­day to the op­er­a­tors.

In a live in­ter­view in the CNC3 7 pm news­cast last night, Grif­fith said he in­tends to ful­ly in­ves­ti­gate why of­fi­cers at the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion al­lowed nine peo­ple who were ar­rest­ed on Tues­day to leave the sta­tion in the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day with over $22 mil­lion in cash seized dur­ing the raid on Tues­day.

Grif­fith was caught un­aware yes­ter­day af­ter the nine ar­rest­ed sus­pects were re­leased with the mon­ey. Speak­ing on a ra­dio in­ter­view dur­ing the morn­ing, Grif­fith had said the cash was still be­ing count­ed. But hours lat­er in a re­lease, Grif­fith said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice would launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to who au­tho­rised the re­leas­es. He said nei­ther him­self, his Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers nor the TTPS’ Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau were aware of the de­ci­sion.

Asked how this could have hap­pened on CNC3 last night, Grif­fith said, “There is very lit­tle to ex­plain…we messed up, we can­not take $22 mil­lion in cash and re­turn that hours lat­er.”

Grif­fith said the mon­ey could not have been count­ed in such a short time, there was no re­ceipt made out for the mon­ey to con­firm the amount re­turned and the mon­ey was not checked for any coun­ter­feit bills.

“This does not stop here, I in­tend to con­tin­ue to pur­sue this mat­ter,” he said.

Special Operations Response Team (SORT) officers stand guard outside the Drugs Sou Sou on Kathleen Warner Drive, La Horquetta after police returned to the area yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

He again warned that when DSS col­laps­es, thou­sands of peo­ple will lose their mon­ey, as he said when one per­son pays in $10,000 and is paid out $50,000, five oth­er peo­ple would have to lose their mon­ey.

“Peo­ple are say­ing that I should leave this alone but wait for it, as the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said, when the mark buss in two months or so, tens of thou­sands of peo­ple who are at the bot­tom of the pyra­mid and would have lost their tens of thou­sands of dol­lars will come cry­ing to the same Gary Grif­fith.”

He con­firmed there are po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved in the scheme, adding the big­ger is­sue was that of­fi­cers were com­plic­it in get­ting the mon­ey back to the DSS ad­min­is­tra­tors while an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was on­go­ing.

“When you have $22 mil­lion in cash, the po­lice must be able to as­cer­tain that all the pro­ceeds you got from this $22 mil­lion are le­git - so you can’t just bring re­ceipts and link the re­ceipts, you have to look at the re­ceipts. Sup­pose some­body had a re­ceipt for $50,000 in cash to give to that in­di­vid­ual, we need to find out how you got that $50,000 or $100,000 or $150,000. The po­lice of­fi­cers left no re­ceipts, no copies, so it is their word to claim they saw the re­ceipts and the re­ceipts would have been equiv­a­lent to $22,157,000, it reeks of ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Grif­fith said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is still on­go­ing but again made an­oth­er ap­peal to the pub­lic not to get in­volved in pyra­mid schemes. He said with the in­volve­ment of po­lice and oth­er law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, it had be­come dif­fi­cult for him to deal with the mat­ter.

He said he was try­ing his best to keep the coun­try safe but some cit­i­zens are kick­ing against his ac­tiv­i­ties.

“It seems like cer­tain peo­ple do not want this coun­try to be safe but they want me to re­duce crime but it must not af­fect them, it can­not work that way.”

He said the mon­ey that was seized from DSS could have been used as a front for mon­ey laun­der­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing, drugs, pur­chas­ing weapons or from gangs si­phon­ing cash.