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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Paton's drug fine sparks new legal row
Brian Horne Evening News, Edinburgh
Tuesday 29 Jun 2004 FORMER Bay City Rollers boss Tam Paton's record fine for drug offences has started a legal row. Prosecutors say the pop promoter turned property tycoon should not have been ordered to pay a UKP200,000 penalty before they had been given time to go through his books in search of possible profits from drug-dealing. Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC, Scotland's top law officer, is appealing against the way the fine was imposed by judge Roderick Macdonald QC. The new twist emerged at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday when Paton, 65, appeared briefly in connection with a Crown investigation into his substantial assets. Defence advocate Frances Connor asked for the probe, known as confiscation proceedings, to be delayed for three months, until the outcome of the Crown appeal was known. In April, Paton - worth an estimated UKP5.2 million and earning UKP20,000 a month - shrugged off the fine, saying: "It is a lot, but not a lot to me." He said he would rather have seen the money go to an orphanage or some other good cause. Paton had halted a planned trial by admitting charges of being concerned in the supply of cannabis resin and herbal cannabis between January and March last year. The judge told him his guilty pleas, and his age and continuing heart problems, had saved him from a prison sentence. He also told him: "The Crown have not disputed that you purchased the drugs for yourself and those living in your house and you were not to profit from this exercise." Despite the acceptance that Paton was not trafficking for profit, he still faced a demand to show that his substantial assets had been gained honestly. A Crown Office spokesman said: "It is the fact of the conviction, not the circumstances, which would trigger a confiscation action." Investigators had the power to look at Paton's financial dealings over the past six years, he added. The Crown Office also confirmed that its appeal was over a point of law and did not mean that Paton faced a possible jail sentence. It said the judge should not have fined Paton until the confiscation proceedings had been dealt with. "The Proceeds of Crime Act action should have taken precedence over the fine," the spokesman said. "This is not an appeal against an unduly lenient sentence." In April, the High Court in Edinburgh heard that a drug squad raid on Paton's luxury home, Little Kellerstain, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, caught him red-handed. He was holding a kilo of cannabis resin and claimed someone else living in the house had thrust the bars into his hands as the officers rushed in. Another two nine-ounce bars were in a chair where he had been sitting. The court heard that seizures on March 27 and January 15 last year, taken together, amounted to UKP25,920. On both occasions police had been tipped off. Paton said he was helping out his tenants. Some of the people who rented rooms there had been offered six kilos of cannabis resin at a bargain price of UKP4800 and Paton had helped bankroll the deal. Paton used cannabis to help his high blood pressure, the court heard. A date has still to be set for the Crown challenge.
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