T&T nationals held in 772-kilo BVI cocaine bust

Two Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als are among six men ar­rest­ed dur­ing a mul­ti-agency op­er­a­tion in the British Vir­gin Is­lands that led to the seizure of 772.4 kilo­grammes of co­caine, ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day by that coun­try’s Po­lice In­for­ma­tion Of­fice.

The ex­er­cise took place be­tween De­cem­ber 8 and 9 and in­volved His Majesty’s Cus­toms, the Roy­al Vir­gin Is­lands Po­lice Force, Unit­ed States Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion, and the Joint Re­gion­al Com­mand Cen­tre from the Cari­com re­gion. Of­fi­cers moved in af­ter in­tel­li­gence point­ed to sus­pi­cious mar­itime ac­tiv­i­ty with­in BVI wa­ters, lead­ing to the in­ter­cep­tion of a ves­sel and the re­cov­ery of the co­caine.

The Trinida­di­ans charged are Ce­sar Di­az Abrahim, 30, and Ronald James, 49. Al­so charged are Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic na­tion­als Fran­cis­co Mejia Or­tiz, 21, Joel San­tana San­tos, 39, and Jer­mife Toribio Vasquez, 40, along with Can­di­do Rois Queza­da, 42, of St Kitts and Nevis.

All six men face charges of im­por­ta­tion of a con­trolled drug and four counts of pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled drug with in­tent to sup­ply. They re­main in cus­tody pend­ing their ap­pear­ance at the Mag­is­trates’ Court.

In­ter­im act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Richard Ull­ger com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers and part­ner agen­cies, say­ing the op­er­a­tion rep­re­sent­ed a ma­jor dis­rup­tion to transna­tion­al crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“This seizure is a clear demon­stra­tion of what can be achieved when law en­force­ment agen­cies work to­geth­er with pre­ci­sion, in­tel­li­gence, and de­ter­mi­na­tion. The re­moval of more than 770 kilo­grams of co­caine from cir­cu­la­tion rep­re­sents a ma­jor blow to or­gan­ised crime. I com­mend every of­fi­cer and part­ner agency in­volved for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism and un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing the Vir­gin Is­lands.”