HKSAR v. Joeroeja Urvan Rainer

HCCC 169/2017

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CRIMINAL CASE NO 169 OF 2017

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Transcript of the Audio Recording
of the Sentence in the above Case

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COURT:

Defendant, on 22 May 2017, you pleaded guilty to an offence of trafficking in a dangerous drug before a magistrate at the Eastern Magistracy. You were committed to the High Court for sentence.

On 10 September 2016, you arrived by plane into Hong Kong. You are a Suriname national. You were intercepted at the Arrival Hall of the Hong Kong International Airport by a customs officer for inspection. Nothing illegal was found from your personal belongings. You had with you US$655. Suspecting internal concealment, you were escorted to a hospital for further examination.

In the hospital, the X-ray on you revealed foreign objects in your body. You were arrested and cautioned in English. You then replied in English, saying, “I have 90 pellets of cocaine inside my body and I swallowed them in a hotel of Brazil”. In the next nine days whilst you were in the hospital, you discharged a total of 95 packets of cocaine which amounted to 970 grammes of a solid containing 730 grammes of cocaine which forms the subject matter of the charge.

The estimated retail value of the drugs in September 2016 was in the sum of HK$1,080,000.

In your video-recorded interview, with the assistance of a Dutch interpreter, you admitted that you swallowed around 90 pellets of cocaine given to you by an African named Benjamin. You were supposed to call Benjamin when you arrived in Hong Kong, and then Benjamin would arrange someone to contact you. You had already received US$700 from Benjamin for your expenses in the trip and you were supposed to receive a further US$5,000 after successfully delivering the cocaine to its recipient in Hong Kong.

Defendant, you are 32 years of age and you were born in the Republic of Suriname. You are a man of clear record. You have three children aged 10, 8 and 5. In Suriname, you were a taxi driver, earning $3,000 which is equivalent to about HK$3,000. You are educated up to the equivalent of Form 2 in Hong Kong.

Mr Richard Donald explains why and how you committed this offence. In short, your girlfriend’s mother required an operation to save her life. That operation fee was US$5,000. However, despite your and your girlfriend’s efforts to obtain loans from the bank, this was unsuccessful. You therefore turned to a loan shark to borrow the money. The stipulation of that loan was that it had to be repaid one month later.

Your girlfriend’s mother’s operation was successful. But soon after that, you broke up with your girlfriend as she could not bear the burden of repaying the loan shark. You were unable to repay the loan and the loan shark made threats to beat you up and murder you. But the solution was that the loan shark suggested you could repay the debt by trafficking in drugs, and which you had to travel to Brazil to do so.

Mr Donald has made it clear to me that despite your unwillingness and being a reluctant participant in trafficking of drugs, you are not suggesting or putting forward duress as a reason for your commission of this offence. You therefore committed this offence as this was the way to repay your outstanding debt and also be given a reward of US$5,000.

You have written a letter to the court, pleading for mercy and apologising for the commission of your offence. You say you now understand and are fully aware of the harm and destruction that it would be to society, life, family and friends. You have accepted full responsibility and the consequences of your offence, and for that reason, you have pleaded guilty. That is your strongest mitigating factor, your plea of guilty at the earliest opportunity. For offences as serious as this, there are few mitigating factors.

Mr Donald has referred to the appropriate guideline cases in respect of trafficking in cocaine being HKSAR v Abdallah and also for the proper sentence to be passed in respect of the international element at amounts of between 500 to 1,000 grammes of narcotic.

Defendant, you were trafficking in 732 grammes of cocaine and following the guidelines in Abdallah, had you been convicted after trial, an appropriate starting point would be one of 20 years and 6 months’ imprisonment. You had imported or brought these drugs into Hong Kong from aboard. There is therefore an international element involved which is an aggravating factor which calls for enhancement of that starting point. For this quantity of drugs involved, I therefore enhance your sentence by a further 1 year and 6 months’ imprisonment. That would make a sentencing point of 22 years, had you been convicted after trial.

Giving you full credit for your plea of guilty, that sentence shall be reduced by giving you the full one-third discount and you should be sentenced to 14 years and 8 months’ imprisonment.