Billion rupee coke bust

By Ranil Wijayapala and Chathuri Dissanayake

Stacks of cocaine under inspection

Lalitha Weerasinghe

With the detection of the largest quantity of cocaine smuggled into the country, questions are being raised whether Sri Lanka is becoming a transit point for the smuggling of this 'high class' drug. The country has already been identified as the Indian Ocean hub in the heroin smuggling network. Till now detection of cocaine, a drug with a high market value, used by the affluent in society, has been limited to small quantities.

However, last week the joint operation by the Customs Narcotic Unit and the Finance Ministry Raid Unit, warranted a visit to the Customs yard by none other than President Maithripala Sirisena.

The tip-off received by Sub Inspector Premalal, the Unit OIC of the newly established Special Narcotic Raid Unit of the Finance Ministry, (SNRU) also attached to the Operation Unit of the STF, was one worth a billion rupees.

The information received through a private informant by SI Premalal was conveyed to his superiors who promptly acted on the matter. SI Premalal was then instructed to gather more information from the informant. The team was able to obtain the container number around 2.30 p.m. on June 13, Monday. To ensure secrecy, the team remained tight-lipped about the details till the last minute. Not even the top brass was informed of the the container number or the owner's name until the operation was well under way.

The investigators had little time to lose. The cocaine which has been smuggled into the country in a sugar container was about to be released to the owner by the Customs, on Monday afternoon.

Acting on information received, the team sprang into action. They met Lalitha Weerasinghe, Director Customs, the same afternoon to discuss the best course of action. A plan was immediately put in place.

After the meeting, Weerasinghe got his customs officials to call the wharf clerk.

"We got the wharf clerk to come to the yard under false pretense," Weerasinghe recalled.

'The officer who is to release your containers is going on leave tomorrow, so come immediately if you want to get the containers released,' the wharf clerk was told. Clerk who was keen to get the containers released for the importer turned up immediately, and the combined investigation team set into action.

But the team could not find the particular container they were looking for. There were only two containers in the Orugodawatta Container Yard of the Customs.

The said sugar importer enjoyed privileges afforded to importers who willingly complied with Customs regulations. As there was no past history of any Custom related offence in over two decades of import business, and because sugar was categorized as a low risk product, the importer enjoyed the Gold Card privilege from the Customs in the process of getting the containers cleared.

As a practice, only a few containers, selected at random from each shipment would be scanned and inspected at the Customs yard, while the others would be inspected by the Customs officers in the importer's yard.

Of the four containers brought in by the importer in this particular shipment, only two remained in the Custom yard. The other two had been sent to the Asia yard in Wellampitiya near Black Bridge to be inspected by Custom officers due to visit the venue.

The team then decided to visit the Asia container yard in search of the container. Finally, after locating it at the yard among a number of other containers, the owner was contacted.

The business organization under which the shipment arrived was a partnership entity. Although both partners were summoned, only one partner arrived as the other was not in the country.

Willingly complying with the investigation, the importer named Vasudevan made arrangements to bring the container back to Customs yard for inspection under special security of STF.

However, when the investigating team put the container through the C-scanner to detect for counterfeit items, nothing was indicated, Weerasighe said.

Confident of the information received, the STF team then insisted on a manual inspection. This posed different problems. The imported item was sugar- a food item, inspection will therefore have to be carried out in a controlled manner to ensure that the health and safety standards are maintained and no contamination occurs.

However, it was too late by then to make all necessary arrangements for a manual inspection of the container. The team decided to halt the investigation for the day about at 8 p.m. on Monday ; the container was to remain in the Orugodawatte yard. STF members from the Finance Ministry Raid Unit was tasked with guarding the container overnight.

The investigators returned on Tuesday morning around 9.30 am to find Vasudevan already waiting for them at the yard, Weerasinghe said.

The officers were somewhat puzzled by the importer's behaviour. He conducted himself in a manner that did not arouse any suspicion, and was at the yard even before the investigators arrived on the second day, explained Weerasinghe.

The manual search began immediately, in the presence of all required officials and the owner of the container.

But, even when the container was opened, they found nothing unusual inside. It was stacked with sacks of sugar from top to bottom. Puzzled, the team proceeded to search each bag of sugar. It was only after almost half of the bags were inspected, did they find the drugs. It was the third bag in the centre, that securely hid the illegal items.

"Once taken out we found three black coloured travelling bags weighing 91.6 kilo grams in the gunny bag. In it were three blocks which was later confirmed as cocaine packed in air tight bags. They also found a Lion mark in each block of cocaine", the STF official added.

Initial tests done by the officials of the Customs Narcotics Unit confirmed the contents to be cocaine. Later, the National Dangerous Drug Control Board officials also confirmed the fact, after conducting a test.

Subsequent to this confirmation, both importer and wharf clerk were taken into custody, and the case was handed over to the Police Narcotic Bureau for further investigation.

According to the SNRU of the Finance Ministry it is the biggest stock of cocaine detained in Sri Lanka and the officials who conducted the raid were commended by President Sirisena. The unprecedented move by President Sirisena to visit the yard itself indicated the importance of this high value detection.

According to Prof. Ravindra Fernando, Chairman, National Dangerous Drugs Control Board, the consignment of cocaine detected inside could not have been meant to be sold here in Sri Lanka as there is no such big market for cocaine, it being a high end drug. However, the Police investigations are yet to confirm this.

A police officer involved in the investigation told the Sunday Observer that the owner of the sugar consignment repeatedly denied any involvement in smuggling this stock of cocaine.

"We are also trying to trace where this cocaine was headed for", the official said.

The Brazil Embassy in Colombo has ensured the arrest of the exporter of the sugar consignment in support of the Sri Lankan investigations relating to the biggest cocaine heist.

A gram of cocaine has a street value of Rs.30,000 in Sri Lanka, Head of SNRU Wing Commander (Retd) Ravi Jayasinghe estimated.

Unlike heroin, it is a drug used among the affluent in the country, as the ordinary people cannot afford the drug. Since the impact of the drug is not so visible, no one can immediately trace the users of cocaine. It is not an addictive drug.

The investigators are now trying to determine for how long the smuggling may have gone on undetected, as the importer has a long business history. Their attention has been drawn to an individual connected to Vasudevan who had purchased properties worth Rs. 7.5 billion during the past few months.

Already Brazil Embassy in Sri Lanka is cooperating with the Sri Lankan investigations and have taken all details relating to the shipment and the persons involved.

The Handbook of Drug Abuse Information 2015 does not even mention the use of cocaine in Sri Lanka compared to street level supply of heroin.

The Police Narcotics Bureau statistics also does not show major detections of cocaine in Sri Lanka except for a major cocaine detection made in 2012.

Police Narcotics Bureau Special Drugs Detection Units deployed at the Bandaranaike International Airport arrested two foreigners, a Thai woman and later a Filipino woman at the BIA in February 2012 for possession of cocaine.

The Fillipino woman, a transit passenger travelling from Sao Paola, Brazil via Doha was arrested when trying to smuggle 3.3 kilograms of cocaine, the biggest hauls of cocaine arrested in the country during that time.

Therefore, the 80 kg of cocaine detected on Tuesday goes down in history as the biggest haul detected in Sri Lanka.

The raid has been conducted under the supervision of Chief Inspector Sagara Kulasekara and Sub Inspectors K.A. Premalal, P.M.K.D.Wimalarathna, R.P.D.C.R. Rajapaksa, M.H.A. Maduranga, K.J.S. Jayalath, R.M.A,P.D. Rajanayake and W.S.K. Weerasinghe of the Police Special Task Force. They were supported by Police Sergeant Ekanayake (39907), Police Constables Buddhika(68296), Upeksha(10168), Saman (87013), Chamara (70613) and PC Driver Withanage (39661).

Pix: Rukmal Gamage