NCB Mer­chant Bank (Trinidad and To­ba­go) Lim­it­ed says a US$2 mil­lion cash ship­ment seized at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port last month was a le­git­i­mate trans­ac­tion con­duct­ed in the or­di­nary course of busi­ness be­tween reg­u­lat­ed fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

The state­ment came af­ter a news­pa­per re­port­ed to­day that au­thor­i­ties had launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the seizure of a white cro­cus bag con­tain­ing US$2 mil­lion in cash at the South Ter­mi­nal of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on June 25. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the mon­ey orig­i­nat­ed from NCB Mer­chant Bank and was des­tined for Mi­a­mi, with a stopover in Ja­maica, be­fore Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cials seized it over what they de­scribed as "cer­tain trans­ac­tion­al and ac­count­abil­i­ty de­fi­cien­cies".

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued to­day, NCB Mer­chant Bank said the cash ship­ment ref­er­enced in re­cent me­dia re­ports be­longed to the bank and re­lat­ed to a trans­ac­tion con­duct­ed in the or­di­nary course of busi­ness with an­oth­er reg­u­lat­ed fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.