Eigh­teen peo­ple have been charged af­ter po­lice un­cov­ered a large-scale il­le­gal quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tion in the Manuel Con­go area of Gua­napo dur­ing a pre-dawn raid on Thurs­day.

The ex­er­cise, led by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and sup­port­ed by spe­cialised units in­clud­ing the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Unit, the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment, and the Mul­ti-Op­tion Po­lice Sec­tion, fol­lowed about a year of sur­veil­lance. Of­fi­cers found sev­er­al sus­pects at­tempt­ing to flee in­to the near­by for­est.

Gue­var­ro said, “They dug deep to steal ag­gre­gate, but we dug deep­er and this time, it wasn’t grav­el we ex­tract­ed.” The sus­pects face charges un­der the Min­er­als Act and are due to ap­pear in court on Oc­to­ber 22. All were grant­ed bail by a Jus­tice of the Peace.

The com­mis­sion­er added that in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­main ac­tive as of­fi­cers pur­sue ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence and iden­ti­fy fur­ther con­spir­a­tors. Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der de­scribed the op­er­a­tion as “good work” and said, “You can sur­veil things for three years.”