The dangerous drugs which you accept you have trafficked in under Count 1 were 15,430 grammes of cocaine.
The estimated street value of the dangerous drugs which you have admitted to trafficking in was HK$25.6 million.
That is a huge quantity of drugs and presumably an established group of drug traffickers for whom you were working.
The Summary of Facts has been read out to you and you have accepted them as the basis of your plea, those facts are that you were stopped on 15 September 2019 by the police in a multi-storey car park in Tin Fu Court and you were in possession of the keys to a car which was found to contain two large bags of cocaine in which there were 18 blocks of approximately 1 kilogramme each.
On arrest, you admitted that you were carrying the cocaine for someone else and under a video-recorded interview you said the car was rented. You had been renting it for about a month and using it to deliver the cocaine since July 2019 for a reward of $6,000 per block. The 18 blocks which were found in the vehicle on 15 September were to be deposited as if they were garbage at a site to be designated.
You are 31 years of age and as Mr Yu said, 29, at the time of this offending and you are now a driver by trade, well, you were at the time of your arrest. You have a wife and three children who are very young and you have been supporting your parents as well. I have read the letters that were submitted to me from your family and from your employer and from the pastor. There is no doubt that until this offending you were a man of essentially good character who was the main breadwinner of the family.
However, this was not a one-off offence where you were caught unawares. You have been delivering drugs from July and were being rewarded the huge sum of $6,000 per block. Whilst I realise the monies you received for delivering those drugs may have been destined for your father’s medical expenses and to repay debts which had accrued, as Mr Yu has accepted, there can be no excuse for carrying out criminal acts and certainly not continuing to do so over a period of time although of course you will only be dealt with for those drugs that were found in the van, today.
Other people’s lives are ruined by the use of cocaine and that is why sentencing for dangerous drugs carries a deterrent sentence. I do accept that you are remorseful for what you have done and I accept that you were co-operative with the police upon arrest. I also accept that you have already suffered some punishment for what you have done because you weren’t able to attend your father’s funeral; you weren’t able to be at the birth of your last child. More importantly, your children will be without a father for some considerable time; your wife without a husband and your mother without her son.
Mr Yu has said all he could possibly say on your behalf given your circumstances and I have taken that into account. For trafficking in 15,430 grammes of cocaine under the guidelines in HKSAR v Abdallah Anwar Abbas [2009] 2 HKLRD 437, the starting point for sentence after trial attracts a sentence of 30 years for 15,000 grammes after which, as Mr Yu has said, the sentence is at the discretion of the court.
You were a courier of drugs and the excess amount is negligible when taken against the total found in your possession. I therefore consider the starting point after trial appropriate at 30 years.
You will, of course, receive a full one-third discount for your plea at the very first opportunity which also includes the discount for your remorse and for your family circumstances.
You will go to prison for 20 years for trafficking in dangerous drugs but there remains the matter for which you received a suspended sentence of 4 months on 10 May 2019 before Fanling Magistrates’ Court. This offending was during the period of the suspension and the sentence of 4 months’ imprisonment and must now be activated.
However, I do consider the overall totality of sentence and the nature of the previous offending when your mind might have been on other things and I intend to activate the sentence but direct that you serve that sentence concurrently with the one now passed by this court and so you must go to prison for 20 years.