General News of Friday, 28 April 2017

Source: mynewsgh.com

Omane Boamah calls for investigation into $30m missing cocaine at Tema Port

Former Minister of Communications, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah Former Minister of Communications, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah

A former Minister of Communications under the immediate past National Democratic Congress (NDC) government, Dr Edward Omane Boamah is demanding an immediate investigation into circumstances that led to the disappearance of $30 million worth of cocaine from the Tema Port.

He called for an urgent action indicating that a full scale professional Presidential Commission of Enquiry must be established to investigate the matter.

The Finder Newspaper on its Friday report revealed that 10 bags of suspected cocaine, each weighing 50kgs (500kgs in all) hidden in a consignment of rice with an estimated street value of about $30million has vanished from the Tema Port under mysterious circumstances.

According to the paper, a ship carrying some containers with cocaine onboard arrived in Tema Pot in December 2016 but the suspected cocaine vanished before February 23 2017 when all stakeholders conducted compulsory tests on the container.

The K9 Dogs which are specially trained to detect cocaine confirmed traces of cocaine in the said container while UK’s Operation West Bridge also conducted sampling by the use of itemisers which also confirmed traced of cocaine.

Its Investigations indicated that when the ship arrived, the identification of containers selected for sampling were FSCU-7559200, IRNU-2610834, CCLU-3224764, TRHU-1653800 and TRLU-8778855.

All these were 20-footer containers and each contained 550 bags of white long grain rice according to the bill of lading.