A wide-rang­ing clam­p­down on il­le­gal gam­bling, tax eva­sion, smug­gled al­co­hol and firearms un­fold­ed across Trinidad and To­ba­go this week, with po­lice seiz­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in un­paid gam­ing tax­es, con­tra­band liquor and cig­a­rettes, il­le­gal weapons and large quan­ti­ties of drugs.

Be­tween Tues­day, De­cem­ber 16 and Wednes­day, De­cem­ber 17, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice car­ried out a se­ries of co­or­di­nat­ed in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions across mul­ti­ple di­vi­sions, tar­get­ing il­lic­it trade, or­gan­ised smug­gling and gun and drug traf­fick­ing.

In Port of Spain, of­fi­cers con­duct­ed op­er­a­tions aimed at gam­ing es­tab­lish­ments with out­stand­ing tax­es. Six es­tab­lish­ments were served with Board of In­land Rev­enue gam­ing tax no­tices to­talling TT$4.5 mil­lion, and man­agers were in­struct­ed to shut down all gam­ing ma­chines un­til the tax­es were paid.