The Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force(TTDF) has not been able to re­spond to ques­tions re­gard­ing two ve­hi­cles which were re­moved from their Cu­mu­to Bar­racks with­in the last nine years af­ter ac­quir­ing the ve­hi­cles from Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed.

In­sid­ers at the TTDF head­quar­ters al­leged that the il­lic­it op­er­a­tion that Guardian Me­dia spent close to a month in­ves­ti­gat­ing has been able to thrive for so many years be­cause of the in­volve­ment of sev­er­al se­nior of­fi­cers with no one will­ing to in­ves­ti­gate.

When the man­u­fac­tur­ing en­ti­ty of Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed closed its doors in the ear­ly 2000s most of the as­sets of the fad­ing sug­ar gi­ant were ei­ther sold off or sent to be used in oth­er State agen­cies.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force turned out to be one of those State en­ti­ties un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty that ob­tained sev­er­al of the com­pa­ny’s ve­hi­cles.

Sev­er­al of the ve­hi­cles, se­nior sources at the TTDF told Guardian Me­dia, would be use­ful for the en­gi­neer­ing bat­tal­ion. Some of the ve­hi­cles in­sid­ers say would be used as wa­ter trucks, trac­tor trucks or per­form oth­er rel­e­vant du­ties.

Around 2006-2007, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment(TTR) re­ceived at its Cu­mu­to bar­racks 24 ve­hi­cles- which in­clud­ed Land Rovers, Nis­san and Mit­subishi trucks, Ford wheel trac­tors, CAT crawlers, tankers, and trail­ers ac­cord­ing to this doc­u­ment.

The es­ti­mat­ed worth of these ve­hi­cles at that time sources say were just over $10mil­lion based on the age of the ve­hi­cles.

These ve­hi­cles were lat­er out­fit­ted with Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment num­ber plates, sources in­side the TTDF Head­quar­ters re­vealed.

Af­ter army cap­tain, An­dre Seesa­hai was charged with the lar­ce­ny of a mil­i­tary green Pra­do in late De­cem­ber last year- se­nior TTDF of­fi­cers pro­vid­ed Guardian Me­dia with in­for­ma­tion and doc­u­ments con­nect­ed to miss­ing mil­i­tary ve­hi­cles and miss­ing parts - from the batch of ve­hi­cles that had been ob­tained from Ca­roni Lim­it­ed span­ning sev­er­al years.

A few years af­ter the ve­hi­cles ar­rived, two of the Nis­san trucks with the num­ber plates 5TTR-94 and 5TTR-95 were re­moved from the Cu­mu­to bar­racks some­time in 2012 with the as­sis­tance of a wreck­er sup­pos­ed­ly to be re­paired at a Cen­tral garage.

A stan­dard pro­to­col ac­cord­ing to TTDF sources was that when a dri­ver was leav­ing the bar­racks with an army ve­hi­cle or when a mil­i­tary ve­hi­cle is be­ing re­moved from com­pound they must fill out the par­tic­u­lars in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment(TTR) ve­hi­cle tick­et book­let.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a copy of this green coloured book­let with pink pages in­side. There were columns that the rel­e­vant per­son­nel had to fill out which in­clud­ed where the ve­hi­cle was leav­ing from, where it is be­ing tak­en to, the na­ture of the du­ty or load that it is car­ry­ing and oth­er specifics.

Se­nior of­fi­cers at the TTDF head­quar­ters told Guardian Me­dia there was nev­er any record found as to who au­tho­rized the move of these trucks or any pa­per­work to show these trucks had ever left the com­pound.

Though there was nev­er any ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion launched by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties se­nior TTDF told Guardian Me­dia two of the trucks were traced to a garage at Lendore Vil­lage in Mon­trose, Ch­agua­nas in ear­ly 2017. The garage now shut down be­longed to own­er Lu­cius Bhag­gan who passed away in Cana­da in late 2017.

The trucks were en­tire­ly scrapped and all that was left, based on the pic­tures Guardian me­dia ob­tained from in­sid­ers, were the chas­sis of the ve­hi­cles.

The truck’s chas­sis TTDF sources say had been hid­den un­der an­oth­er derelict truck on the com­pound and at­tempts were made to con­ceal the chas­sis num­bers from the im­age that Guardian Me­dia ob­tained. The miss­ing parts from the trucks in­clud­ed V-8 en­gines, front and rear sus­pen­sion, two cab­ins and the gear­box­es.

TTDF sources al­so re­vealed that a Vol­vo trac­tor truck from the Ca­roni batch of ve­hi­cles was al­so tak­en for re­pairs at a garage in Chase Vil­lage- they be­lieve that truck was al­so scrapped and its parts sold off.

Bhag­gan at that time had ad­mit­ted to sev­er­al army of­fi­cers af­ter the find, that he had been in­struct­ed to scrap the trucks and sell every­thing.

He al­leged then there was a ring of se­nior of­fi­cers in­side the TTDF prof­it­ing from this il­lic­it op­er­a­tion.

A high rank­ing of­fi­cer who had been in­formed about the miss­ing trucks by oth­er of­fi­cers in a con­ver­sa­tion seen by Guardian Me­dia ad­mit­ted he had not seen the trucks on the com­pound for a long time- and vowed to in­ves­ti­gate thor­ough­ly to find out which of­fi­cers were in­volved in this rogue op­er­a­tion- but noth­ing came of it.

Sources at the TTDF Head­quar­ters say that sev­er­al of the ve­hi­cles that were ob­tained from Ca­roni that re­main at the Cu­mu­to bar­racks are al­so said to be miss­ing var­i­ous parts.

Sev­er­al of­fi­cers say they have been afraid to speak out about this il­lic­it op­er­a­tion for fear of vic­tim­iza­tion by se­nior of­fi­cers who are al­leged­ly com­plic­it with the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

Be­fore these ve­hi­cles could be auc­tioned ac­cord­ing to se­nior army sources all the ve­hi­cles must be trans­ferred.

Guardian Me­dia re­cent­ly ob­tained the cer­ti­fied copies of 20 of the 24 ve­hi­cles and none of the ve­hi­cles had been trans­ferred to date.

Se­nior per­son­nel in Ca­roni con­firmed that there had been arrange­ments made on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions to meet and dis­cuss the trans­fer of the ve­hi­cles with a Lieu­tenant, but the TTDF had re­neged on these arrange­ments. In­sid­ers say be­cause the TTDF could not ac­count for the miss­ing ve­hi­cles – they could not sanc­tion the trans­fer of the ve­hi­cles.

Dur­ing Guardian Me­dia’s month-long in­ves­ti­ga­tion, we had reached out to Ca­roni’s CEO Wayne De Chi and de­spite leav­ing sev­er­al mes­sages with his sec­re­tary about the mat­ter over the last two weeks he did not re­spond to any re­quests for an in­ter­view.

We sent four­teen ques­tions to the TTDF PRO Capt. Dil­lion on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 6th re­gard­ing this il­lic­it op­er­a­tion and asked about the where­abouts of the ve­hi­cles in ques­tion as well as oth­er per­ti­nent ques­tions.

Dil­lon re­spond­ed the same day to the email stat­ing:

“I will look in­to your ques­tions and try to pro­vide you with the per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion.”

But a week and a half lat­er the TTDF has not re­spond­ed de­spite a fol­low-up email in­di­cat­ing our in­tent to air and pub­lish the sto­ry this week.

In­sid­ers told Guardian Me­dia that top army per­son­nel has been ask­ing for an­swers about this mat­ter. Those tasked with find­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion about how these ve­hi­cles could have dis­ap­peared from the com­pound with­out a trace have not been able, to date, to find any cred­i­ble pa­per trail.