$140 Million in cocaine up in smoke
As early as five this morning, the destruction of more than two tons of cocaine began 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. News Five’s Isani Cayetano reports.
Isani Cayetano, Reporting
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
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.
Let’s assume that this indeed was cocaine that was destroyed I wonder what they did with all the spill coming out those packages after axing them, why could they not used a gentler approach that would not cause such spillage, whose idea this was to use an axe?
I STILL DON’T BELIEVE THEY REALLY BURNED IT…………..
It’s kinda like Hollywood…. make-believe. Why would they destroy $140 million dollars?????
Was it a good idea to disclose the site where the cocaine was destroyed? I hope we have more than one option so that if we get this lucky again, the cartel or organization cannot plan ahead & take out the whole village to get their stash back.
Good job BDF & BPD. I choose to believe you guys were not destroying flour.
Don’t they make legal drugs from cocaine, Belize should have a lab to turn this into something useful and even get permission to sell it to a pharmaceutical company for exchange of medicines and educational materials NO CASH.
hmmm…Lime stone, flour or some other compost .. not cocaine for sure…Dem PLOTICIANS must be living in CLOUD 9 right about……………………………NOW!
I think the department went to great lengths to ensure that the destruction of the drugs was done transparently, and vetted by independent sources, so lets give them the benifit of the doubt until someone has something concrete to suggest otherwise. I think anyone who wants to criticize when they are corrupt also has to complement them when they do the right thing.
GOB for once you did good…. i give you that. but you need to create mechanism that discourage currption within the ranks of the police officers. I am pretty sure that you can get funds under the merida initaitive to increase salaries or benefits to police officers. Police officers can not serve us well when their familes are hungry, their kids need books, and medecine. No. they will get help from where they can. Put systems in place where also those who are fund to be currpt be penalized to the fullest extent of the law. Internal Affairs need to do more. they need to make adhoc visit or inspections at the check points. supervise raids, supervise special occacions to see if the officers are doing thier job and in what they can improve.
According to the other news station, the media was called in when there was only 31 bales left… what kind of transparency is THAT?!?!
Government always going to mexico on meeting about how they can help one another to stop drug trafficking and so forth. The United States is also always working with Belize to asist on the drug traccking to their country. What I don’t understand is why when a small country like Belize makes a big catch like these the mexican government and press or the united states government or press like CNN are not here to put Belize on the map that yes we are fighting drug from not entering their country. Perhaps we should have the government PR people do someting like this more internationally than just locally.
Lany, dont use Cloud 9 in this….Cloud 9 a good sounds….not to be messed up in this mess
OW Resident…good thinking….but the “internal affairs head, sgt Roaches” was in the nasty bunch…
they most have carried the cocaine to the mexican border close to orange walk and burned bebe agua flour in exchange with the mexicans, i don’t believe they burn the cocaine, secondly the destruction was not correctly done with an axe, all they had to do was burn it in plain open field with gasoline, package by package one by one to make sure they burn completely but the spill they left ,come on maybe someone picked up the ten pounds left where they axe the so called cocaine instead it was flour. See why we as belizeans can’t believe the law anymore because of the same corruption and crop they always do. it’s really hard to believe. if they really burn it, to make sure they did i know that SOMEONE OR SOME PEOPLE WILL BE KILLED DUE TO THE BIG LOSS FOR THE CARTEL UNTIL I HEAR SO I CAN SAY YES THEY REALLY DID, BUT IF WE DON’T HEAR KIDNAPPS OR KILLINGS RELATED THEN take it for granted it was bebe agua flour that was burnt.
they burn flour.
An American friend of mine said she doesn’t know how they handled the drugs in the manner they did; said that more than likely the cops/officials would have gotten some of the drugs absorbed through the skin and they would have been high as a kite and maybe even go into cardiac arrest.
Any thoughts?
I don’t believe that the authorities burned all that coke. They may have burned some but not all. What we saw them doing on the news was an illusion. Nothing but smoke and mirrors. The rest of the dope is probably hidden somewhere in Belize waiting to be exported to the U.S. Come on now…$140,000,000.00 U.S dollars worth of coke up in smoke? Really? Don’t Belize the hype!
good point TEK IT these so called officials don’t carry out the destruction properly as done internationally so all this things like this brought out by TEK IT is real, how the hell the try to fool the public if most belizeans some how has seen on tv news internationally how this things are done very carefully and destroyed professionally not like what they did in BSI. it’s hard to brianwash the people now, we’re more update to this things than what they suppose.
Burned flour smells like over toasted bread but mixed with bagass it would smell like $hit or so I would think.
Twelve Kendall Bridges??? Brute that’s a crap load of value whose head will the Colombians be rolling for this stuff? the cops who got caught or the Jefe who hired these guys? Somebody is no longer sleeping good at night!
Bull crap burn what………..PLEASE I hope no one in Belize is that stupid to believe that all that drugs went up in smoke all of us would be high if they burnt all that drugs. I don’t feel high I feel quite shitty swallowing all this crap that I am being fed by officials.
so so genius rung deez parts eh?
SOMEONE PPL ARE LIVING IT UP IN BZ NOW…..$1.4 M? THIS IS AN EXAGERATION. NOTHING OR LITTLE WAS BURNT. BELIZE IS SO CORRUPTED NOW STARTING FROM THE GOVERNMENT POSTIONS. YEA ONLY A HANDFULL WILL BENIFIT.
@Earl Grey
You need to drink some of your own tea and calm down. It was $140 million, but guess what, if it is $140m of death and destruction, then I don’t want any part of it. That comment of yours right there is indicative of what is wrong with our society…we believe that everything is governed by its price tag. That is why police officers are involved in this (and we don’t know what else they might be involved in).
That is why we have little girls being made to prostitute their bodies by family members who might get some supposedly needed assistance from some foreign pedophile, and then when prosecutorial authorities step in, they pressure the children to say they won’t testify or they don’t remember anything, all because the source of convenience/money/financial assistance will dry up. And don’t begin to think that I don’t know what I am talking about; I used to be an integral part of that prosecutorial process. My own (then) virgin ears heard these statements for themselves.
I wish Belize the best, because we are slowly dying as that peaceful, laid-back Central American country we once were known to be. As some people would say, WE NEED JESUS!!
@ Phacetious Plebbe………….. it’s good that you lost the virginity in your ears…… hope it didn’t hurt too much. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD.
AS for me……….. I DO NOT TRUST THE GOVERNMENT……. ANY GOVERNMENT!!!
and……… BELIZE HAS TURNED AWAY FROM GOD…..
The Belize Council of Churches is a total waste… THEY HAVE FAILED US.