COURT: The defendant has pleaded guilty in the Magistrates’ Court to one count of trafficking in a dangerous drug, namely 1.17 kilograms of a slurry containing 0.60 kilogram of cocaine.
The facts are unfortunately all too common in Hong Kong these days. The defendant arrived in Hong Kong from Sao Paulo, Brazil, via Doha, and he was carrying a Colombian passport.
The Customs officers suspected that the defendant had dangerous drugs concealed in his body. He was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where an x-ray was performed which revealed that he had foreign objects inside his body. Subsequently, the defendant passed out a total of 25 packets of dangerous drugs.
He was subsequently interviewed under caution, and he admitted that he brought the drugs to Hong Kong because he had financial difficulties in Colombia, and that the person who would wait for him at the airport to receive these drugs and would pay him US$3,000. He said that he did not have the contact details of that person, and he did not really know what the stuff inside the packets were.
The drugs were subsequently examined and found to be of the weight which is the subject matter of the charge. These drugs have an estimated street retail value of about HK$1,165,320.
The defendant is aged 59 and has a clear record in Hong Kong. As Mr Surman so correctly pointed out, it is difficult to mitigate in drug trafficking cases because Hong Kong courts look very seriously upon such offences, particularly when a person imports the dangerous drugs into Hong Kong.
It is all too common in Hong Kong these days for defendants to come from Colombia with financial difficulties and who are forced into carrying drugs to Hong Kong for the sake of repaying their debt. In some countries, very often drug traffickers get the death penalty. In Hong Kong, we visit these kind of offences with heavy sentences, and the reason is to try and deter other people who are tempted for the sake of easy money to bring drugs into Hong Kong.
The social problems in Colombia is well known, and the only way for people like the defendant to be deterred is if the newspapers in Colombia would publicise the fact that people who come to Hong Kong with drugs concealed in them will have to face very, very tough sentences.
In Hong Kong the Court of Appeal has laid down that for trafficking in cocaine, the same guidelines as were used for heroin in the case of Lau Tak Ming in 1990 should be followed. So for trafficking in 400 to 600 grammes of cocaine, a sentence of 15 to 20 years is recommended.
In this case, the defendant was trafficking in 600 grammes of cocaine, and therefore a starting point sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment is therefore reasonable in the circumstances.
There is also the aggravating feature that he imported these drugs into Hong Kong, and the court would normally add a sentence of 1 to 2 years on top of the starting point sentence, and in this case I will add 1 year for importation, bringing the total sentence to 21 years’ imprisonment.
The defendant has pleaded guilty. I entirely accept that he is remorseful, and so he is entitled to one-third off the 21 years.
And therefore, he is sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment.