That’s right, as much as 100 million Belize dollars!

Yes, indeed, today’s bust amounts to one of the biggest - if not the biggest in Belize’s history.  It hasn’t all been weighed and tallied yet, but based on the preliminary figures given by the commissioner of police today, it is not over one tonne as we originally estimated, but over two tonnes.  Here’s more from the commissioner as he gave an outline to the press this evening - setting alongside his Deputy and Commander of Operations - both of the senior officers nicely outfitted for the occasion in their battle Dress Uniforms:

Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"This morning early around 12:15, 12:30 thereabout a track was observed leaving Venezuela heading our way. Based on the tracking we mobilized as we would normally do and the tracking was followed closely by an air asset of another Central American country all the way into our airspace. When the tracking arrived in our airspace sometime around 4 this morning, one of our neighbouring country air assets was deployed and again it kept monitoring for us. The plane landed at approximately 4:05 AM this morning and the team comprising of police and BDF quickly responded to the area where we got the information the plane had landed and upon our arrival at the location, we found the plane, which is a G2 Jet and inside the plane was 69 bales of what we suspected to be cocaine. Those 69 bails amounted to 2,070 parcels of suspected cocaine. We also found in the area, two M-16 rifles and some masks. We believe that those person who were involved in the plane landing might have seen us coming into the area from a distance and by the time we got to the location, they had disappeared. We still have teams in the area searching with the hope that we will find person or persons."

"The drugs were subsequently moved from the location and unfortunately one media house stood in front of the Racoon Street Police Station and broadcasted live how the drugs were being unload into the Racoon Street Police Station, putting the officers and the station at risk and so we have relocated the drugs from Racoon Street and it will be taken to an unknown or an undisclosed location until we're prepared for its destruction. Your innocent action could cause mayhem in the sense that our police station could be attack. We know that these drugs are valued in the tens of millions and the traffickers may want to do whatever needs to be done to regain control and therefore you'd bring the police station and the officers and anybody who may be at the police station at the time at risk. I would ask that in the future that we just be a bit more cautious in how we do our reporting. I also saw that same media reporting that they were saying that drugs and monies let me say that there were no monies being moved, it was only drugs. No money was found on the plane or within the area of the plane. The investigation into the plane landing with a view to ascertain who the players are continues. Fingerprints were lifted from the plane and those prints will be sent to the AFIS as well as to Interpol to see if we can make a match, either locally or internationally. We believe that the print might be for the pilot, so we'll see if there is anything on the pilot on Interpol Database because Interpol does deal with fingerprints as well."