Three arrested for Cocaine in logs bust

Three persons involved in the shipping of a container of logs in which Jamaican authorities discovered a large quantity of cocaine last month, have been arrested.

This was confirmed by a senior Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) official yesterday. However, the source did not indicate if or when charges will be laid against the trio.

On March 16, Jamaican authorities busted 122.65 kilogrammes of cocaine with a street value of $700 million among logs in a container on the MV Vega Azurit. The vessel had left Guyana on March 12.

The cocaine was packed in five bags and concealed among the logs.

Meanwhile, when questioned, the official neither confirmed nor denied that a fake seal was found in possession of one of the three persons arrested. A separate investigation, the official said, is currently being conducted.

The investigation into the use of a fake seal to authenticate the container of logs before it left Guyana, the source said, is being conducted jointly by CANU and the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA).

Last Thursday, Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon had said that the cocaine found in a container of logs “displayed weakness across the board that needs to be attended to.”

At his weekly post-cabinet briefing, Dr Luncheon had said that both the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) and the GRA along with the security sector have recognised that there are weaknesses.

“This seeming ability to get to the containers, to breach containers, to use false and duplicate seals to conceal breaches—that is for both arriving and departing cargo—has been seen somewhat as a novelty,” he said.