Drug bust: Beirut officials’ accounts raise questions about NACOC’s cocaine ‘controlled delivery’ claim – Bright Simons

The Honorary Vice President of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons, has questioned the claim by the Narcotics Control Commission (NACOC) that the movement of a 46.7kg consignment of suspected cocaine from Accra to Beirut was part of a controlled delivery operation.

He says accounts given by Lebanese authorities in interviews with local media do not suggest that they had cooperated with Ghanaian security agencies in advance to facilitate the operation.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, November 7, Mr Simons said his team had analysed several interviews granted by Lebanese officials, most of them published on Arabic-language news websites, and found inconsistencies with NACOC’s explanation.

“The accounts that they give does not suggest that they were cooperating with Ghana. That's one of our problems. It may be that we are mistaken,” he said.

He clarified that his concern was not whether Lebanese authorities had engaged Ghana after the suspect was arrested, but whether there had been prior coordination between the two countries to allow the consignment to pass through before the arrest.

“And of course, and I don't mean cooperating with Ghana as in not engaging Ghana at all. I'm saying that whether they are cooperating with Ghana on controlled delivery. Because that would mean that in advance, all of this was arranged in advance,” he explained.

Mr Simons acknowledged that Lebanese authorities had admitted to engaging Ghanaian Customs and security officials after the apprehension.

However, he said such post-arrest engagement did not establish that a controlled delivery operation had been jointly authorised before the suspect was arrested.

He further questioned the apparent absence of Lebanon’s Central Narcotics Bureau, which he described as the equivalent of NACOC and part of the country’s Internal Security Forces (ISF), from the operation.

According to him, the bureau is legally required to supervise controlled delivery operations in Lebanon, making its apparent non-involvement a significant concern.

“One critical element is that the Central Narcotics Bureau, which is part of the ISF of Lebanon, is the NACOC equivalent there. If you are doing controlled delivery, they cannot be absent in such an arrangement because in their law, they are supposed to be the supervisory authority,” he said.

He added that Lebanese officials’ failure to indicate that the bureau participated in the operation raised questions about whether the interception was instead handled as a customs operation.

“The fact that in this instance, the Lebanese authorities do not say that they were involved in the operation itself, of course, these matters we handed over to them eventually, also raised strong issues because it appeared to be a customs operation in Lebanon,” he said.