R v Mark Green
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 14 May 2008 |
| Neutral Citation | [2008] UKHL 30 |
| Date | 14 May 2008 |
| Court | House of Lords |
[2008] UKHL 30
HOUSE OF LORDS
Appellants:
Tim Owen QC
Andrew Bodnar
(Instructed by Stokoe Partnership)
Respondent:
David Perry QC
Duncan Penny
(Instructed by Crown Prosecution Service)
Ordered to Report
The Committee (Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, Baroness Hale of Richmond, Lord Carswell, and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood) have met and considered the cause R v Green. We have heard counsel on behalf of the appellant and respondent.
This is the considered opinion of the Committee.
The point of law of general public importance certified by the Court of Appeal as involved in its decision in this case was expressed in these terms:
"Where any payment or other reward in connection with drug trafficking is received jointly by two or more persons acting as principals to a drug trafficking offence as defined in section 1(3) of the Drug Trafficking Act 1994, does the value of each person's proceeds of drug trafficking within the meaning of section 4(1)(b) of that Act include the whole of the value of such payment or reward?"
The Court of Appeal (Moore-Bick LJ, David Clarke and Swift JJ), for reasons given by David Clarke J, gave an affirmative answer to that question ( [2007] EWCA Crim 1248, [2007] 3 All ER 751), which the Crown as respondent supports before the House. Mr Green, the appellant, contends for a negative answer.
The facts
The appellant pleaded guilty on 13 May 2004 at Manchester Crown Court before Judge Steiger QC to three counts of drug-related offences: conspiracy to supply Class A and B drugs, conspiracy to launder the proceeds of drug trafficking and conspiracy to import controlled drugs. He was sentenced on 2 August 2004 to a term of 13 years' imprisonment. A number of fellow-conspirators were charged with him, some of whom pleaded guilty and others were convicted after trials. These other defendants were sentenced to terms varying from eleven years' down to five years'.
The conspiracy, a sophisticated scheme for the obtaining and distribution of large quantities of drugs, mostly a form of cannabis known as "skunk", involved their importation by post from mainland Europe in large padded envelopes, delivered to numerous mailboxes rented by or on behalf of the appellant, who used a number of false identities. The conspirators changed much of the proceeds of sale of the drugs into cash, exchanged the money into foreign currencies in bureaux de change and used it for the purchase of more drugs. It was not in dispute that the appellant was the principal directing mind behind the conspiracy.
The Crown sought confiscation orders from the defendants and a series of hearings was held, which resulted in the making of orders against the other convicted persons before the proceedings against the appellant. Those proceedings were conducted over three days in January 2006 by Judge Steiger, who gave a written judgment on 17 February 2006, in which he made a confiscation order in the sum of £2,500,000.
The appellant pleaded guilty on the basis of a written document submitted by him, in which he admitted his involvement in the conspiracy between March 2001 and his arrest in September 2003. He claimed in this plea to have been concerned in the distribution of just under one and a half tonnes of cannabis and a small quantity of Class A drugs. He subsequently filed an affidavit, in which he claimed that the quantity imported was in fact two tonnes, at prices higher than those estimated in the Crown evidence. As David Clarke J remarked in the Court of Appeal, the judge regarded this amendment as nothing more than a device to explain the source of all the money that had been laundered through the bureaux de change.
The prosecution case was that the appellant's "benefit" calculated from the aggregate of the overall purchase and sale prices of the cannabis at the figures and quantity claimed by the appellant (totalling £9.4m), together with expenditure of £1.2m, amounted to an overall total of £10.52m. The appellant claimed, on the other hand, that his benefit came to £4,832,761.80. In computing this sum he sought to deduct from the benefit received by him a proportion of the profits retained by two of his co-defendants.
The judge arrived at a figure for benefit of £7,345,450, made up as follows. He took the quantity of 1.5 tonnes of cannabis admitted by the appellant in his basis of plea and applied to it the purchase and sale prices propounded on behalf of the Crown, which gave a sum of £5.25m. He added a sum of £1m, which he estimated to represent the proceeds of trading between the start of the conspiracy in July 2000 and the appellant's admitted commencement date of March 2001. To that he added the sum of £1,095,450, representing unexplained assets to which the statutory presumption under section 4(3) of the Drug Trafficking Act 1994 applied. This total came to some £2,471,731 more than the combined benefits assessed to have been received by the other defendants.
The judge then assessed the appellant's realisable assets at a total of £2.5m. It was not in dispute that assets amounting in all to £577,533 were available. The judge considered that the substantial gap between the benefits attributed to the appellant and his known assets indicated that there must be considerable hidden assets. As the appellant had elected not to give evidence, he had produced no explanation for the gap. In determining the amount of...
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