The local police have suspicions about a company here that may be involved in the shipping of cocaine in a consignment of timber sent to the United Kingdom but they cannot take steps until they get help from abroad.

So said President Bharrat Jagdeo at a press conference yesterday. He added that the government was taking a lot of heat on the matter because people thought that “somehow we do not want to release the information.”

When asked to disclose the identity of the company implicated in the $1.9B cocaine bust, Jagdeo said to question these people required support from Scotland Yard, the police and customs authorities in the United Kingdom.

These authorities had not been forthcoming, he said and added he was “very, very disappointed” because the local police could not release the names of the suspects without any proof. He said the local police could not take steps until they got help from abroad because the cocaine had not been found in Guyana.

He said the police had suspicions based on their own investigations. “Scotland Yard and in this case those people involved in the investigations, are putting us, the Government of Guyana and the (Guyana) Police Force in a very delicate position. Because all that was shared with us was what you see in the newspapers today.”

Yesterday’s Stabroek News reported that one person who helped conceal the cocaine in the timber consignment was now in the British police’s custody, and informed sources told this newspaper that the man, a Jamaican businessman, had been in Guyana just prior to the shipment.