The Police expect to be in a position within a fortnight to provide information about the cocaine discovered in a consignment of timber that was shipped from Guyana to the United Kingdom in June.

Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj and Commissioner of Police Floyd McDonald both told Stabroek News that they should receive information soon from the British authorities looking into the matter to allow them to complement the investigations now underway in the United Kingdom.

Gajraj said that the information expected from the British authorities would allow the Police to continue their investigations at this end.

The Commissioner said that he expected to receive a formal request from the British authorities through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for assistance at this end.

Seven men are before the courts in Wales and are due to appear for a committal hearing on Monday. They were arrested in Newport, Wales on June 7 and were placed before the courts on charges related to the importation of the cocaine, which arrived via a container ship that docked at Felixstowe, England.

Officers of HM Customs, the British National Crime Squad and the Gwent Police, in what was called Operation Kalouchin, tracked the shipment to the Newport, South Wales location where the seven, Jamaican businessman Lebert Barrows, and Gerald Davies, Anthony Chambers, Michael Silcox, Milton Wilson, Joseph Salmon and Mohamed Afzal Shaheen were arrested.

A release from the Police last month said that the cocaine smuggled out of Guyana was believed to be part of the activities of a trafficking ring operating in the Caribbean and that a Jamaican national had been in Guyana to facilitate the shipment that the British authorities are investigating.