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veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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Great-grandson of Churchill guilty in £7m drugs racket
#7660523 - 11/20/07 08:16 PM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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Great-grandson of Churchill guilty in £7m drugs racket November 21, 2007 - Guardian
The great-grandson of Sir Winston Churchill pleaded guilty in a court in Australia yesterday to being involved in a multi-million dollar racket involving the drug ecstasy. Nicholas Jake Barton, 33, admitted knowingly taking part in the supply of a commercial quantity of a prohibited drug. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Barton was arrested at his apartment in a Sydney suburb in June after a three-month undercover police operation. About 250,000 ecstasy tablets, 18kg of the powder MDMA used to make the drug, and two industrial pill presses were confiscated in police raids.
The tablets had a street value of $12.5m (more than £6m) and the powder was worth about $2.5m. A large amount of Australian currency was also found.
Barton's mother is Arabella Spencer Churchill, the granddaughter of the war-time prime minister. One of Barton's middle names is Gompo, said to be a tribute to a Tibetan resistance leader, whom Churchill backed in the fight against China's 1949 invasion of the Himalayan kingdom.
Barton had originally been charged with a more serious offence of supplying a large commercial quantity of a prohibited drug, which carried a possible life sentence and £240,000 fine.
After appearing at the district court in Sydney before Judge Greg Hosking, Barton was taken back to Sydney's Parklea jail where he has been held since his arrest.
Barton's father, James, who was in court, said after the hearing that his son had not known the full extent of the ecstasy operation and had made an error which he deeply regretted. He had let his house to acquaintances shortly before it was raided by police as he had been planning to return to Britain for a long holiday.
Charles Waterstreet, Barton's barrister, said: "He had a much narrower role than was originally alleged. He had no idea of the quantity."
Barton spent his early years in squats and communes with his hippie mother after she separated from his father, a Scots headmaster. He emigrated to Australia aged 18, studied marine biology at the University of Launceston, Tasmania, and then spent some time in the film industry. At one point he worked as a pearl farmer in Indonesia. Friends said he never talked about his aristocratic background.
Seven months before Barton was arrested he married his long-term girlfriend, Kim, at the resort of Byron Bay.
Barton will be sentenced on February 22 with his co-accused, Reese Gerard Woodgate, a 42-year-old New Zealander, who has also pleaded guilty.
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veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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Re: Great-grandson of Churchill guilty in £7m drugs racket [Re: veggie]
#7779317 - 12/19/07 08:19 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Churchill's great-grandson sentenced December 20, 2007 - news.com.au
The great-grandson of Britain's wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill has been sentenced to at least 20 months jail for his part in a $15 million ecstasy supply operation in Sydney.
But Nicholas Jake Barton will be eligible for parole in February next year, in time to visit his terminally ill mother in the UK.
Judge Colin Charteris told Downing Centre District Court there had been an opportunity to "temper justice with mercy".
Barton's mother, Arabella Spencer Churchill, the granddaughter of Sir Winston and daughter of his son Randolph, is expected to die from pancreatic cancer by April, the court was told.
Barton, 34, pleaded guilty earlier this year to taking part in supplying a commercial quantity of a prohibited drug in June 2006.
But Judge Charteris found he had only a "belated and limited role in the supply of the drugs seized by police".
The judge said: "In determining the appropriateness of the sentence, the fact the defendant is descended from a hero of the 20th century does not affect the sentence I must impose."
He said it "was of historical importance only".
The court was told Barton sublet a rental property in Malabar Road, in the eastern Sydney suburb of Coogee, to his co-accused, New Zealander Reese Gerard Woodgate, in early June 2006.
When police raided the property on June 17 of that year they found a black backpack containing 10kg of ecstasy tablets and 12kg of MDMA - the powder used to make the drug.
A pill press, four tins of acetone, scales, gloves and other equipment were also seized.
The court heard Barton was living with his wife and young stepdaughter in Byron Bay at the time, but had rented the property with the intention of moving to Sydney in September 2006.
He sublet it to Woodgate to avoid paying rent in the intervening three months.
Barton did not give evidence during his trial but provided a statement to the court.
In it, he claimed when he first sublet the property he did not know Woodgate would involve himself in the illegal drug trade.
But Barton admitted that when he did find out, "to my utter regret, I didn't take action to stop it ... and became complicit."
Judge Charteris found there was no evidence Barton had been enriched by his involvement.
He added Barton's guilty plea, despite the Crown's weak case, indicated "genuine contrition".
Barton had references from his uncle - the former British MP also named Winston Churchill, as well as Sir Winston's last surviving child.
He was sentenced to three years jail with a minimum term of 20 months, backdated to June 17 last year, when he was first taken into custody.
He will be eligible for parole on February 16, 2008, and Judge Charteris said he should then be granted permission to leave the country in order to visit his dying mother.
Sir Winston was Britain's Conservative prime minister from 1940 until the end of World War II in 1945, then again for four years from 1951.
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mr_pat
Stranger


Registered: 11/19/07
Posts: 100
Last seen: 6 years, 1 month
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Re: Great-grandson of Churchill guilty in £7m drugs racket [Re: veggie]
#7780047 - 12/20/07 12:13 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Wow he got off easy....
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