Ganja behind false wall in container
Several persons assisting CANU probe
Stabroek News
May 25, 2002
The Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) has taken a number of persons into custody following Thursday's huge marijuana find in a supposedly empty 40-ft container at the John Fernandes Wharf.
Stabroek News was told that persons are assisting the CANU officers in their investigation into how 392 packages of cannabis were stacked behind a false wall in the container.
CANU officials yesterday said that the container arrived in Guyana on May 1 from Jamaica transporting plastics and cement and was scheduled to leave the country on Thursday for Miami when it was intercepted with the cannabis weighing 1.871 kilogrammes.
It was said yesterday that the marijuana had a street value of about $60 million.
According to officials the last person the ship was consigned to has not yet been contacted in connection with the find. The container was only taken to the wharf on Thursday from the company's container depot at Industrial Site.
Thursday's bust was the second largest of cannabis to be found in Guyana and incidentally the largest ever was also unearthed in a supposedly empty container.
In January of 1995 police officers had discovered some 2,307.27 kilogrammes in a container in which goods had been imported for the Regency Shopping Centre on Regent Street.
Owner of the store, Cecil Abrams was arrested in connection with the find but was acquitted and not sentenced to three years in prison as was erroneously stated in this newspaper yesterday. Stabroek News regrets the error and apologises to Abrams for any inconvenience caused.