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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Judge in row over record UKP200,000 fine
Lucy Adams & Brian Donnelly The Herald, Glasgow
Tuesday 29 Jun 2004 COLIN Boyd, the lord advocate, yesterday became involved in a legal row with a judge over the way a record fine for drug offences was imposed. Prosecutors claim Tam Paton, former Bay City Rollers manager and now a property tycoon, should not have been ordered to pay a UKP200,000 penalty before they had been given time to search his books for profits from drug-dealing. Mr Boyd - Scotland's top law officer - is appealing against the way the fine was imposed by judge Roderick Macdonald QC. The twist in the proceedings emerged at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday when Paton, 65, appeared in connection with a Crown investigation into his substantial assets. When the Proceeds of Crime Act was introduced in 2002 to strengthen the powers of the police and courts to investigate money laundering and give them powers to freeze bank accounts of suspected criminals, Jack McConnell, first minister, hailed it as "a shot across the bows of the drug barons". However, figures released last autumn showed in its first year the Criminal Confiscation Unit had seized just UKP1.2m, while the Civil Recovery Unit had collected about UKP345,000. Officers admit the figure was disappointing but argued the process is complex and time-consuming and seizures will increase with more resources. Yesterday, Frances Connor, defence advocate, asked for the confiscation proceedings to be delayed for three months, until the outcome of the Crown appeal is known. In April, Paton - worth an estimated UKP5.2m and earning UKP20,000 a month - shrugged off the fine saying: "It is a lot, but not a lot to me." He added that he would rather have seen the money go to a 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, along with his age and heart problems, had saved him from jail. 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." However, in spite of the acceptance Paton was not trafficking for profit, he still faced a demand to show that all of his his substantial assets had been gained honestly. Yesterday, a Crown Office spokesman said: "It is the fact of the conviction, not the circumstances which would trigger a confiscation action." He said investigators had the power to examine Paton's finances over the last six years. 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 confiscation proceedings had been finished. A date has still to be set for the Crown challenge. The Crown appeal came after Graeme Pearson, director of the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency, said yesterday he was so confident in the growing work of the four-year-old organisation that he expected to seize as much as UKP21m in cash and assets from drug dealers in the coming year. Last year, the figure was less than UKP1m. He also said people smugglers and paedophiles would increasingly be targeted as the agency prepared for changes in crime fighting that would broaden its powers. "There is a growing interest in these two areas. So that, plus fraud plus counterfeiting and software piracy, and all those kinds of soft issues that organised crime use to develop finance for itself because what they get off the back of those kind of things, they invest in drugs," he added. Mr Pearson will lead the Scottish Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SSOCA), already nicknamed the McFBI. It will become the most powerful crime-fighting agency in Scottish history, and is expected to be up and running in two years alongside counterparts in England and Northern Ireland.
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