Of­fi­cers of the Guyana Po­lice Force’s Spe­cial Or­gan­ised Crime Unit (SOCU) suc­cess­ful­ly in­ter­cept­ed an il­le­gal gold smug­gling at­tempt in­volv­ing Brazil­ians.

Ac­cord­ing to the SOCU, its of­fi­cers de­tained two Brazil­ians and seized a large quan­ti­ty of gold and over GUY$26 mil­lion (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents) in cash.

Ar­rest­ed are Al­bi­na Fil­ho Alves Vieira, 42, male of Brazil­ian na­tion­al­i­ty, a sales­man, and Er­izan­gela Re­gia De Oliv­era, 39, a fe­male clothes ven­dor al­so from Brazil.

The two are cur­rent­ly as­sist­ing with in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Head of SOCU Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Fazil Karim­baksh, the of­fi­cers were able to dis­rupt the smug­gling op­er­a­tion be­fore the gold could be moved across the bor­der, un­der­scor­ing the gov­ern­ment’s un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to tack­ling transna­tion­al crimes and pro­tect­ing the na­tion’s valu­able re­sources.

“The op­er­a­tion al­so serves as a warn­ing to in­di­vid­u­als and groups en­gaged in such il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties that law en­force­ment agen­cies re­main vig­i­lant and proac­tive in their en­force­ment ef­forts.

This lat­est crack­down fol­lows a sim­i­lar en­force­ment ac­tion in Ju­ly last year at the Ra­ma­da Princess Ho­tel when of­fi­cials re­spond­ed to in­tel­li­gence on il­le­gal gold smug­gling re­sult­ing in the ar­rest of three Chi­nese na­tion­als.