Ganja in container
Still no arrests; CANU says probe not completed
Stabroek News
July 19, 2002
Almost two months after the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) unearthed some 392 packages of cannabis behind a false wall in a container at the John Fernandes Wharf no one has been arrested and charged for the illicit drug find.
Stabroek News was told yesterday by a CANU source that the agency is still in the process of interviewing several persons in its evidence gathering of the very "complex investigation."
The source said that within the next two weeks the investigation would be wrapped up and charges would be instituted.
On May 23, CANU officers had swooped on a 40-ft container at the wharf and discovered the drugs which weighed 1,871 kilogrammes (around 4,116 pounds) in compressed form. The street value was given at around $60 million.
The blue container was empty except for the drugs and was scheduled to leave the country the same day for Miami on MV Heinrichs. The container had arrived in Guyana on May 1 from Jamaica and there was some speculation as to whether the marijuana was loaded here or had come from Jamaica for transshipping.
A source had told this newspaper that the container left Jamaica and made stops in Trinidad and Suriname and there was a possibility of persons in those countries being questioned.
"... we have not reached that stage as yet, but the possibility exists," the source had said.