British national held after $6m marijuana seizure at Piarco

A 22-year-old British na­tion­al is ex­pect­ed to face charges af­ter of­fi­cers of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion in­ter­cept­ed near­ly TT$6 mil­lion worth of mar­i­jua­na at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Sun­day.

The di­vi­sion said the pas­sen­ger was stopped dur­ing rou­tine clear­ance op­er­a­tions at the air­port and re­ferred to the Red Line for a more de­tailed ex­am­i­na­tion of lug­gage.

Dur­ing the search, Cus­toms of­fi­cers al­leged­ly dis­cov­ered a quan­ti­ty of plant-like ma­te­r­i­al con­cealed in­side the pas­sen­ger’s bag­gage. Of­fi­cers at­tached to the Pre­ven­tive Branch were con­tact­ed and re­spond­ed to the scene.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, field tests lat­er con­firmed that the sub­stance was mar­i­jua­na.

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion es­ti­mat­ed the street val­ue of the seizure at TT$5,996,295.80.

The di­vi­sion did not dis­close the ex­act quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na seized or pro­vide fur­ther de­tails on the pas­sen­ger’s in­tend­ed des­ti­na­tion with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In the re­lease, Cus­toms said the in­ter­cep­tion un­der­scored the vig­i­lance of Cus­toms of­fi­cers and the agency’s on­go­ing ef­forts to com­bat the il­le­gal im­por­ta­tion of nar­cotics through the coun­try’s ports of en­try.

The di­vi­sion added that in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions and strate­gic en­force­ment ini­tia­tives con­tin­ue to play a key role in de­tect­ing smug­gling at­tempts and pro­tect­ing the coun­try’s bor­ders.

The seizure comes amid con­tin­ued ef­forts by law en­force­ment agen­cies to clamp down on drug traf­fick­ing and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in­volv­ing air­ports and sea­ports across the re­gion.

Cus­toms of­fi­cials urged mem­bers of the pub­lic to re­main vig­i­lant and co­op­er­ate with law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties in ef­forts to curb il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty at the na­tion’s bor­ders.

The British na­tion­al re­mains in cus­tody pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions and the lay­ing of for­mal charges.