$140 Million in cocaine up in smoke
Cocaine Bust Destroyed
Channel 5 Belize | The destruction of more than two tons of cocaine has been completed in the north. An estimated one hundred and forty million dollars went up in smoke as the incinerator at the Tower Hill sugar mill destroyed the Colombian coke. The cargo was first brought to Belize City from the south last Thursday and then transferred up north where all day, the police and B.D.F. oversaw the operation. The cocaine, eighty bales and seventeen loose packs were found last Saturday. It was the cargo of a plane that was abandoned near the Bladen Reserve when it could not take off because of a clipped wing.
From its seizure by members of the Belize Special Assignment Group on Saturday November thirteenth, to its ruin today this mass of Colombia’s finest has arguably been the most guarded commodity in the country next to foreign currency at the Central Bank. Across the sprawling Tower Hill plant this morning members of Belize’s elite tactical forces stood guard while work was being done systematically inside the factory’s inferno to destroy eighty bales of cocaine. It was a painstaking task involving the random sampling and jotting down of information pertaining to each package incinerated.
Each bale is counted; a cake then selected and placed on a chopping block where an A.D.U. officer hacks it open with an axe before passing it on to another officer who then throws it into one of two blast furnaces nearby. Occasionally bagasse is added to the fire to contaminate the fumes coming out of the chute.
Isani Cayetano
“The thick, acrid plume of smoke exhausting the chimneys here at BSI’s Tower Hill facility is not that of the usual sugar crop. Instead what you are seeing is the end result of the destruction of eighty bales of cocaine.”
It is a bit hard to imagine yet totally understandable why this product is heavily sought after on the global market. After all a brick of yayo on the streets of Belize City is the equivalent in value of this 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The entire haul, a combined total of one hundred and forty million dollars, is almost a fifth our national budget for this fiscal year. To further simplify its value it would be the same as building twelve Kendal Bridges.
To ensure that things run smoothly the process is overseen by an appointed group consisting of a Justice of the Peace, a magistrate, a chemist and a senior police officer. Since five-thirty, they have been on the go, accompanying the shipment from its storage at the Raccoon Street Police Station over the weekend to its target at Tower Hill. While the destruction ends a rigorous shift for these armed men it is only the beginning of a wider, more intense investigation into this aircraft that perched on the Southern Highway and those who offloaded its contents last Saturday. Its pilot has since skipped town but five officers attached to the Belize Police Department and a custom’s boatman are currently in detention at the Hattieville Prison awaiting further legal action. Additional charges include a conspiracy charge as it is believed that they were part of an orchestra that landed the plane near the Bladen Reserve.
Corporals Renel Grant and Nelson Middleton, the former and current drivers assigned to the Governor General, and Vidal Cajun, as well as sergeants Lawrence Humes and Jacinto Roches and Customs Boatman Harold Usher were arrested near San Juan Village. The office of the D.P.P. will determine what other charges will be placed on the group.
