Diesel Smuggling Racket In Trinidad Uncovered

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – A team of law enforcement officials, on Saturday, arrested two persons involved in a diesel smuggling racket in which the fuel is exchanged for guns and drugs.

Senior investigators uncovered the racket when they swooped down on a truck at a seafront compound here, on Saturday morning.

According to the police they had been tracking the movements of the truck over the past week, and the vehicle’s occupants were caught in the act when they were returning to offload their second diesel trip from a San Fernando gas station.

They told police they had bought 25,000 gallons of diesel fuel at a gas station in San Fernando for TT$25,000(One TT dollar = US$0.16 cents).

With diesel selling at National Petroleum (NP) stations at $1.50 per litre, this quantity of fuel would have cost upwards of TT$100,000 at pump prices.

Sources close to the investigation said the truck would usually arrive on the seafront, via a compound that has a steel gate before driving onto the seafront and parking near a huge mound of dirt, approximately 20-25 feet in height.

The police say they spotted the two men attaching an industrial marine hose to the truck’s tank and making their way up the hill to place the hose into a hole in the ground.

Smugglers usually run a line from the diesel tank to smaller boats with configured tanks that take the diesel to larger vessels out at sea.

“What we know is that Caricom boats would come to purchase diesel, especially Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and smaller boats would come up to this Sea Lots seafront, collec¬ting fuel from them and in exchange, they would give them drugs and guns,” explained a senior police investigator.

The police believe that the majority of guns recently discovered in the Laventille area entered the country by way of the racket.

Officials in the Ministry of Energy say this operation was being tracked for over two years, and the mastermind behind the operation is a notorious gang leader who also has ties with officials in various law enforcement agencies, as well as NP and Unipet.

Law enforcement authorities say this is not the end of the investigation, and they will continue to dig deeper to find out who are some of the other major players involved in this illegal trade.