Suzanne Shep­pard

Two se­nior of­fi­cers from the Roy­al Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force are due to ar­rive in Trinidad and To­ba­go next week to as­sist in the in­ves­ti­ga­tions sur­round­ing the Drugs Sou Sou (DSS) raid in La Hor­quet­ta.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced he was en­list­ing the help of for­eign­ers for the probe.

Young said he had al­so con­tact­ed the Na­tion­al Crime Agency in Great Britain (NCA) re­quest­ing as­sis­tance with the in­ves­ti­ga­tions and was await­ing the NCA’s pro­pos­al in re­sponse to the re­quest.

Young said the Ba­jan in­ves­ti­ga­tors, who are sched­uled to ar­rive some time next week, will join the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) on ar­rival.

Dur­ing a raid on the DSS’s La Hor­quet­ta base on Sep­tem­ber 22 by the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team, po­lice pur­port­ed­ly seized $22 mil­lion. The mon­ey was lat­er stored at the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion to al­low of­fi­cers to count it but was re­turned to DSS CEO Ker­ron Clarke hours af­ter the seizure with­out per­mis­sion from se­nior of­fi­cers.

At least three probes were launched in­to the mat­ter and four of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing two se­niors, were sus­pend­ed while 11 oth­ers were trans­ferred by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith on Thurs­day to al­low the probe to con­tin­ue with­out and in­ter­fer­ence.

How­ev­er, dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment post-Bud­get vir­tu­al meet­ing in Bel­mont on Thurs­day night, Row­ley said he had asked the British and Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ments for help with in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the raid. He said the roles of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, De­fence Force and crim­i­nal gangs in the in­ci­dent now in the pub­lic do­main were mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“I can tell you as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, I have not had the sim­plest of an­swers in that mat­ter. All I can say to you is that as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil I am dis­turbed, and be­cause I was dis­turbed ... and be­cause of what it means, point­ing to and fin­ger­ing un­ac­cept­able lev­els of cor­rup­tion in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, im­me­di­ate­ly I ap­proached the British gov­ern­ment, with whom we have a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing dat­ed 2018, to co­op­er­ate on mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,” he told sup­port­ers.

“I ap­proached the British gov­ern­ment for help and we are await­ing British po­lice of­fi­cers in Trinidad and To­ba­go on the mat­ter of the Drugs Sou Sou.”

He added, “On the same mat­ter, I ap­proached the Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos. As I speak to you now, two se­nior Bar­ba­dos po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers are on their way to Trinidad and To­ba­go and they will form part of a team that will com­pre­hen­sive­ly ex­am­ine this mat­ter and find out where, how, whom and why $22 mil­lion could have been found by the po­lice, en­ter a po­lice sta­tion, dis­ap­pear af­ter and no­body could tell the coun­try what hap­pened there and mem­bers of the De­fence Force could stand up on the front page of the news­pa­pers and telling the coun­try, ‘I am the one or­gan­is­ing that’.”

Row­ley, who main­tained that the DSS is not a sou sou, warned that if the in­ci­dent was not in­ves­ti­gat­ed prop­er­ly, “it will be a can­cer that will eat the soul of this na­tion.”