“A cancer that will eat the soul of this nation.”

That’s how Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley has described the Drugs Sou Sou matter, which he says poses a major threat to  Trinidad and Tobago’s national security.

Speaking at a PNM Post Budget meeting last evening, the PM said as head of the National Security Council, he has sought out British and Barbados investigators to assist in probing the seizure of the $22million from a home in La Horquetta last month.

“I approached the British government for help and we are waiting British police officers in Trinidad and Tobago on that matter of the ‘Drugs Sou Sou’. On the same matter, I approached the government of Barbados and as I speak to you now, two senior Barbados police investigating officers are on their way to Trinidad and Tobago and they will form part of a team that will comprehensively examine this matter to find out where, how, whom and why $22 million could have been found by police, enter a police station, disappear after and nobody could tell the country what happened there,” he said. 

The Prime Minister hinted that this had become necessary given allegations that TTPS officers and members of the Defence Force have personal interests in the matter. 

“The role of the police in that matter, the role of the defence force in that matter, the role of criminal gangs in that matter, completely unknown to the people of Trinidad and Tobago. And, I can tell you as head of the National Security Council, I have not had the simplest of answers,” he said. 

Police Commissioner: “TTPS is an independent body”

Police Commissioner Gary Griffith reaffirms the independence of the TTPS, and says even when external investigators are contracted to assist in complex matters, they do so only from an advisory standpoint.

The Top Cop says Edmonds Marshall MacMahon, a team of UK lawyers and investigators, have been hired to assist in investigating the DSS matter. He notes that “no police investigation can be initiated or influenced by any politician or sitting government.”