New York (United States of America) ? Everything was set for the take-off of an Accra-bound Ghana Airways flight last Friday, when a group of New York customs officials stormed the plane on the tarmac and politely requested to be allowed to search the cabin crew, ?Chronicle? has learnt.

At the end of their brief search, three members of the crew were busted and are now cooling off in cells of a New York police station for allegedly engaging in what is believed to be money laundering. The three caught in the process were, Prudent Dickson, Aboagye Wiafe, a former broadcaster, and a lady whose name was not available to Chronicle as at the time of filing the story.

They were expected to be arraigned before a New York City court on Wednesday, this week, for possessing an undeclared amount of $45,000. Under United States laws, an individual is not allowed to carry more than $10,000 cash out of the country, but surprisingly the three Ghanair crew members were found to have hidden the $40,000 cash in a crew bag.

According to ?Chronicle? source, last when the Ghana Airways flight was about to depart from New York, the city?s custom officials had a tip-off and stormed the cabin to conduct an inspection and in the process discovered the amount in a crew member?s bag.

?Chronicle? intelligence sources also revealed that over the years drug dealers, who are unable to send large sums of money with them, usually seek the assistance of some flight attendants to transport their money back to Ghana for a fee of 10 per cent.

About a year ago another Ghanair flight attendant, a lady, was busted in Dusseldorf, Germany, in a drug-related incident when drugs dealers engaged her to carry their stuff. She was later sentenced to 10 years in prison. Sources at Ghana Airways told ?Chronicle? yesterday that most of the incidents involving crewmembers could be blamed on the politicisation of their employment.

The sources explained that in the past, big men in the system imposed people on the management for employment and, as a result, all sorts of characters found themselves among the cabin crew. Under normal circumstances, the sources said, there was the need for due diligence and double checking of the personnel to be employed as cabin crew, but because of interference this sound practice has been thrown to the dogs. When contacted, a source close to the top management of the airline confirmed the story. ? The Ghanaian Chronicle