Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has be­gun, to de­ter­mine why over $20 mil­lion in cash was re­turned to a La Hor­quet­ta mon­ey lender, who al­so is in­volved in what is be­ing de­scribed as a “pyra­mid scheme”.

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith says while there are no laws gov­ern­ing such schemes in Trinidad and To­ba­go, cit­i­zens should un­der­stand that they are re­ceiv­ing mon­ey based on the fact that some peo­ple will lose theirs.

The po­lice com­mis­sion­er says the mon­ey which was seized on Tues­day by po­lice, but re­turned on Wednes­day, must be prop­er­ly ac­count­ed for.

He ad­mits prop­er pro­ce­dure was not fol­lowed, and he has no in­ten­tion of turn­ing a blind eye on the mat­ter.

“They should not have [giv­en back the mon­ey]. It was an er­ror made, and whether it was based on in­com­pe­tence or be­ing part and par­cel of this ac­tiv­i­ty, I am deal­ing with this per­son­al­ly,” the top cop as­serts.

“We found out that in­ves­ti­ga­tors ap­point­ed were part of the sou sou,” he points out.

The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er says he will be work­ing close­ly with the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty, as well as the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, to get to the bot­tom of things.

“This is a very se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion—$22 mil­lion in cash in the roof and in box­es all over the place.  We didn’t even check to see how much of it was coun­ter­feit,” he notes.

He adds: “You don’t just give back mon­ey like that to peo­ple. You need to ver­i­fy the re­ceipts, and whether it is au­then­tic [cash]. That could nev­er be done in an hour. Se­ri­ous ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ty has tak­en place here.”

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith states the di­vi­sion­al po­lice of­fi­cers should have hand­ed over the case to the TTPS’ Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB), and the mon­ey should nev­er have been re­turned to the in­di­vid­ual on whom the raid was ex­e­cut­ed.