Two Customs officers are detained tonight – still pending charges after another day of investigations into the smuggling of a container with pseudo-ephedrine out of the Port of Belize. Two of them have been identified as Arun Perez, who’s been with Customs for ten years and Carl Augustine, who’s been there for 16 years. 7NEWS has confirmed that police took those customs officers who are implicated to Corozal where at least one home was searched. They are facing charges of theft, forgery and evasion and the list could get longer. They were not arraigned on charges today – but that could come tomorrow. But they are just small players, tools, really in a much bigger narcotics trade. And the prized holy grail in that trade is the 40 foot container with an estimated 10 million pseudo ephedrine pills.
Police still do not know where it is but they got multiple leads today. None of them panned out and that container still has not turned up. Because of the late notice of the theft that Customs gave police – some 12 hours after it was detected, investigators say that container has most likely been smuggled out of the country. But there is some interesting news as concerns the towhead and its driver, one Howell Hutchinson – the man Customs and police believe drove the container out of the Port compound.
According to our sources, he told police that an unidentified man gave him US$38,000 to buy the tow-head – and hauling the pseudo-ephedrine container was his first job. But when he was hauling out with the container, he claims he was held up on the highway – who took the truck and the container. But what did he say when police found the tow-head, minus the container his home in cotton tree? He said that they brought the tow head back to him. A very shaky story and so far police aren’t buying it. But they haven’t been able to question Hutchinson and that’s because he’s not at home – and claims to be on the road. Now he’s gotten an attorney who’s calling police to tell them he can’t come in for questioning until next week. You get the idea; he’s giving them the run around.
In the meantime, the Customs Department continues to go though the after shocks and present shock of its worse public scandal in memory, but in all that the secretive department has still not told police which all containers in the Port compound are on a watch list.
