Customs officer suspended in case of robbed container truck

In an update to the mysterious jacking of a container truck more than a week ago, late this evening Comptroller of Customs Gregory Gibson confirmed to News Five that an internal investigation is ongoing and has resulted in the suspension of one of its officers. According to Gibson, just after the forty-foot container truck left the Belize City Port after nine pm on April twenty-eight en route to Dangriga, Customs officials informed freight operator Moises Manzur that he was to return the shipment to Belize City. As a back-up, two officers were also dispatched to escort the vehicle to the old capital. But they never got that chance because according to driver Edson Moh, he got a phone call telling him to use the Coastal Road. About a mile along the Coastal Road, Moh says seven armed men in three vehicles held him up and proceeded to steal the rig and its contents. Police and customs officials later found Moh walking on the road towards the Western Highway. The abandoned vehicle was found last Friday emptied of its cargo on George Price Boulevard in Belmopan. The container was invoiced as medicine and vitamins and was bound to a Dangriga businessman but because of the events leading up to its disappearance, the Customs department suspects something very different was inside. Gibson says while the investigation is hoping to determine the identity of the caller who told Moh to take the Coastal Road detour, their probes are focusing on the officers who facilitated the documentation and processing of the container truck. While one officer has already been suspended, two more are also under investigation. Gibson also confirmed reports that the department is looking into another shipment that took place about eight weeks ago involving another container, this one bound for a Mexican businessman in Cancun and invoiced as spices. According to Gibson once investigators have collected the evidence still available, both case files will be forwarded to the relevant authorities who will then decide if the officers involved are criminally liable.