Recently reinstated head of the Customs Anti-Narcotic Unit (CANU) James Singh had been removed by the former government due to the findings of a presidential inquiry, which concluded that he exercised egregiously flawed judgment and breached multiple laws when he released a vessel laden with suspected liquefied cocaine during a 2017 operation.
“The operation, from its inception, was bedeviled by numerous instances of flawed judgments and ultimately concluded with perhaps the most damning flaw of them all – a decision to prematurely release the crew and vessel. These flaws were made manifest from the information and intelligence phase through to the execution phase,” the report of the Commission of Inquiry (CoI), seen by the Stabroek News, states.
On February 16th, 2017, US and Trinidad Coast Guards intercepted a suspicious vessel approximately 70 nautical miles north of Paramaribo, Suriname, in international waters and 3,769 kilos of cocaine, which carried a street value of US$71 million.