Drug Enforcement Agents in The Netherlands and in Guyana are probing the discovery of more than 1100 pounds of cocaine in a shipment of rum that originated in Guyana.
The Dutch authorities made the discovery of the cocaine among the boxes of rum when the shipment arrived at a port in The Netherlands on November 25. Authorities in Guyana were contacted about the discovery and an immediate investigation was launched.
Head of CANU, James Singh, has said that based on the investigations so far, at the point where the container with the rum was passed through the scanner system, nothing illegal was spotted in the container.
“About 590 kilos of cocaine was found in a container that originated in Guyana and the container was in transit in two other territories before arriving in Rotterdam.
“The container was scanned and checked before it left Guyana and we have verified that there was nothing but the product which was rum from one of the local distilling companies inside the container. There was nothing illegal when the container was scanned and we have the images to verify that,” Mr. Singh said.
The CANU Head would not rule out the possibility of the illegal drugs being added to the container after the scanning process. He said a full investigation is underway and he is awaiting additional information from his counterparts in The Netherlands.
Once the scanning is completed of a container for export, seals are placed on the container and it is then stored at the wharf of the company responsible for its shipping.
Mr. Singh said “from the checks and balances that we have done, when it was scanned by the law enforcement authorities, there was nothing inside. It spent a few days on the wharf under the control of the port facility then it was transshipped to two other territories.
“We are waiting on our colleagues from overseas to share what they have and whether there was anything to suggest that it would have been loaded after leaving Guyana. But right now aside from the fact, the container left Guyana, there is nothing to indicate that the drugs left in the container from Guyana.”
The CANU Head said that once the scanning is complete and the container is secured at the wharf, its security becomes the responsibility of the company that operates the wharf.
“During that period, it is now at one of the city wharves which would be under their care and control, meaning that there is security and cameras. That city wharf would be responsible for the container being at its location.
“Just prior to the container being loaded onto the vessel, the seals and everything is double-checked to ensure nobody tampered with them. And that’s why we are waiting on our colleagues overseas to respond to us to see whether or not it arrived intact or while being transshipped, it may have been contaminated,” the CANU Head explained.
The large bulky packages of cocaine were found plastic-wrapped and fitted between the boxes of rum in the shipment.
In the past year, there have been concerns expressed about the scanning system at the ports in Guyana after there were two other drug busts in shipments that originated in Guyana.
Earlier this year, Reuters reported that Customs authorities in Germany and Belgium seized a record haul of more than 23 tonnes of cocaine destined for the Netherlands in two raids.
The two shipments together represented a street value of roughly 600 million euros ($730 million), making it the biggest seizure of cocaine headed for the Netherlands.
In Hamburg, Germany, 16.17 tonnes of cocaine were found in over 1,700 tins of wall filler which had arrived on a container ship from Paraguay.
In the Belgian port of Antwerp, around 7.2 tonnes of the drugs was found hidden in a container filled with wood blocks that had been shipped from Panama.
Paraguay’s anti-drugs authority said later on Wednesday it carried out four simultaneous raids on premises allegedly linked to both the cocaine shipments discovered in Europe.
