Three men ap­peared in the Port of Spain Mag­is­trates’ Vir­tu­al Court, to­day charged with pos­ses­sion of co­caine for traf­fick­ing.
Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, on April 29th an in­tel­li­gence-led ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed by the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit, spear­head­ed by Supt. Fran­cis and co­or­di­nat­ed by Sgt Kel­ly, which in­clud­ed of­fi­cers of the West­ern Di­vi­sion. Based on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, Sgt. Kel­ly board­ed the MV Throne ves­sel and com­menced a thor­ough search, dur­ing which, 475.9 kilo­grammes of co­caine was dis­cov­ered and seized.

Of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed the cap­tain of the ship and 18 crew mem­bers who were all for­eign na­tion­als.
On May 12th ad­vice was ob­tained and re­ceived from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), Mr Roger Gas­pard SC, that the fol­low­ing sus­pects be joint­ly charged for traf­fick­ing in dan­ger­ous drugs,
the cap­tain of the ves­sel, Shaikh Arif Noor Mo­hammed age 31, of, 15 Mad­hub­hal Mill Com­pound Gu­jarati, In­dia, his sec­ond of­fi­cer Chan­dan Ku­mar Singh, age 25, of Abgi­la Pat­na Bi­nar, and man­ag­er of the ves­sel, Be­hzat Tok­goz, age 42, of, Ankara, Turkey.
The DPP fur­ther ad­vised that the ves­sel be seized as an ex­hib­it and be sub­ject to for­fei­ture as an in­stru­men­tal­i­ty of the crime un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, Chap­ter 11:27.

Sec­tion 58 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act will be ini­ti­at­ed through the court to ob­tain an or­der for its dis­pos­al via sale and for funds to be de­posit­ed in­to an in­ter­est-bear­ing ac­count pend­ing the out­come of the sub­stan­tive traf­fick­ing charge. The three men ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Aden Stroude in the Port of Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court, the mat­ter was ad­journed to Fri­day, May 29th, 2020.