A top Antigua and Barbuda maritime official said yesterday that the MV Vega Azurit – a cargo vessel that was intercepted in Jamaica with $112 million in cocaine, is not registered in Antigua and has no links to that island.
Captain Jose A Gillis, who identified himself as the senior deputy director of the Antigua and Barbuda Department of Marine Services and Merchant Shipping, in a correspondence to Stabroek News yesterday said that the vessel that “you are reporting as being probed in [the] cocaine incident in Jamaica is not registered on our books”. He gave the name of the vessel as MV Azurit, but this newspaper was told that MV Vega Azurit is the registered name.
He said that as a result of reports that the same vessel was involved in a history of drug interceptions of cocaine including “a serious one in March”, officials on the island conducted investigations and found that the vessel intercepted in March was