Englishman held in cocaine in molasses probe
shipment originated from Uitvlugt Estate
Kaieteur News
July 20, 2004
The steel drums of molasses that were found to contain cocaine and which were seized by Dutch police in the Netherlands had left GUYSUCO’s Uitvlugt Estate for the United Kingdom.
Kaieteur News has been reliably informed that forty steel drums of organic cane ‘blackstrap’ molasses imported by an English company based in Seven Sisters Road in England left Guyana in April.
The shipment was intercepted by Dutch police at the Port of Rotterdam on June 22. Shipped along with the molasses were 120 bags of sugar. The sugar was also seized by the Dutch police.
The Seven Sisters Road principal agent in Guyana is in Dutch custody assisting them with their investigations.
The shipment in April that contained the cocaine is the sixth shipment over a period of time made by this Englishman who bought sugar and molasses. The molasses were always shipped in steel drums for his company from GUYSUCO, and the Englishman was known to GUYSUCO officials.
A GUYSUCO official is reported to have told another section of the media that GUYSUCO does not ship molasses in steel drums only in bulk of 5000 tons.
A CANU official, who chose to remain unnamed, told Kaieteur News that it is quite possible that all the previous shipments of sugar and molasses shipped by the English company may have contained cocaine.
He expressed the view that the drums should have been opened and searched by customs at the shipping company’s wharf.
The Guyana Revenue Authority has a permanent staff at each wharf in Georgetown.
The street value of the cocaine is said to be worth $US44M and amounts to 700 kilos.
A section of the media had quoted an official of GUYSUCO as saying that the company does not use steel drums in its shipments, which are sent to several Caribbean islands including Grenada, Barbados and St Lucia.
According to the report, GUYSUCO does ship molasses to the United Kingdom via a shipping line but this is done in bulk amounts of 5,000 tons and there have been no recent shipments.
The official said the company also sells to local farmers and producers of animal feed.
The largest confiscation of cocaine prior to the Dutch find on June 22 is 123 kilos found neatly packed inside a shipment of timber shipped from Guyana in May last year, and intercepted in a warehouse by Welsh police.
No one from Guyana has been arrested so far for that bust.