Truck full of contraband seized at police checkpoint

A police checkpoint near the Northern border has netted law enforcement officials a container load of uncustomed goods. According to customs officials, an anonymous tip called in to the department and their police counterparts led to a trap being set up at the checkpoint a short distance south of the border. Sure enough, when the forty-foot container truck pulled up, a check of the documentation raised alarm bells as the information on paper did not match the goods inside the truck. According to Comptroller of Customs Gregory Gibson, the cargo is a wide range of Mexican made consumer goods, and while it will take days to tally the exact total of evaded duties, estimates are that the value of the stuff inside the container is approximately thirty thousand dollars. According to Gibson, the fine levied against the truck’s driver, identified to us as Mexican Victor Lagos, would be somewhere between sixty to ninety thousand Belize dollars. Tonight officials are not releasing the name of the Corozal businessman believed to own the goods, but we understand that in addition to investigating that suspect, authorities are also examining whether there was any collusion by customs officers on duty at the Santa Elena border.