Gbevlo storms airport over $10m cocaine

Checks at the Aviance Cargo village at the Kotoka International Airport, where drug traffickers have in recent times been using for their booming drug trade, have revealed that the cargo scanner at the facility has been tampered with.

According to reports available to Daily Guide the scanner broke down suspiciously soon containers had gone through it, a reason for which the drug lords were able to beat the security checks.

The latest arrests prompted the National Security Coordinator, Lt. Col. Larry Gbevlo-Lartey (rtd), to make an unannounced visit to the Aviance cargo village at the airport where the 1.5 tonnes of cannabis and cocaine busted at the Heathrow Airport in the United Kingdom originated last week.

The cannabis, which was concealed in fresh fruits and vegetables, weighing around 1.5 tonnes with a street value of $8.6 million, was busted at the Heathrow Airport.

A day after the wee arrest, British officials announced the interception of another drug (cocaine) consignment smuggled from Ghana, weighing 7.5 kg with an approximated street value if $ 1.5 million.

The National Security Coordinator stormed the place in the early hours of Saturday around 9 a. m., in a Rambo-style in the company of another security capo, in a bid to uncover the mystery surrounding the circumstances under which the seized cannabis and cocaine departed the airport without being detected with all the security scanners in place.

Gbevlo's first port of call was the warehouse where goods earmarked for export are usually kept.

He, then in the company of one General Mankarta, an official of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) in-charge of security at the cargo village, moved straight to the said scanner which could not detect the busted drugs to inspect the facility and afterwards went to the various security check points to assess things.

The two looked quite disturbed about the security breach which led to the bust of cocaine and cannabis haul and its implications for the country in view of government's claims to have put adequate measures in place to curtail the drugs trade.

It is unclear what the National Security Coordinator told the security men mining the various checkpoints at the cargo village but sources said the move was to ostensibly put some fear in workers at the place in a bid to tighten security and to avert any future occurrences.

Booming drug trade

Ghana, in the past week had been in the international news for drug trafficking to the United Kingdom and other countries. The immediate past United States Ambassador, Donald G. Teitelbaum, had criticized the growing narcotic drugs trade in Ghana.

“Narcotic trafficking, narcotic uses are threats to all of us and Ghana is increasingly becoming a transit point for narcotics. It is also pretty clear that the use of narcotic drugs is on the increase in Ghana”, Ambassador Teitelbaum told a group of Ghanaian journalists at the US Embassy just before he left the country after the end of his duty tour in August.

Though some workers at the Aviance claimed the scanner in question developed a technical fault on that fateful day when the drugs left the country, others also believed it was deliberately rendered useless to enable the narcotic to go through without detection.

The Executive Secretary of the Narcotic Control Board (NACOB), Yaw Akrasi Sarpong, was funning on radio when he alleged that security officers at the cargo village who were strangely asked to go home.

The NACOB boss pointed accusing fingers at Airport Profiling and security services, the company responsible for assaying goods before loading onto out-bound aircraft.

In the case of the busted cannabis at the London Heathrow Airport, it was loaded onto a Virgin Atlantic airline.