By Andrew Clunis, THE VOICE, London:
LAWYERS FOR a Jamaican drug kingpin last week begged a judge not to impose a lengthy prison sentence after their client pleaded guilty to money laundering charges.
They argued that Norman Ramcharan, 50, from Montego Bay, St. James, was frightened of dying in prison in the United Kingdom.
Ramcharan, whose brother Leebert is in jail in Jamaica awaiting extradition to the U.K. on drug charges, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. His conspirator, 41-year-old Everton Dennis, was sentenced to five years.
Customs officers placed Ramcharan under surveillance after he entered the U.K. in January to undergo a stomach operation. While he was healing, he checked into a top central London hotel where his activities were constantly monitored.
He held meetings with Dennis, a law student and former immigration officer in Jamaica, to discuss details of moving the proceeds from cocaine trafficking from the Netherlands, through the U.K. to Jamaica.
Blackfriars Crown Court heard that they laundered £1.7 million through various financial transactions. When they were arrested, they were in possession of several false cheques, made out in the names of various persons, including individuals at a hotel in a Dutch Caribbean island.
Ramcharan was arrested at Heathrow airport as he tried to leave the country, while Dennis was nabbed while returning from a trip to Manchester where a surveillance team observed him buying a black suitcase to transport cash.
He was found with £69,000 in cash on his person when he was picked up at Euston train station on his return from Manchester.
LONG HISTORY
While on bail in September, he again tried to leave the country, this time in the back of a lorry. He was found hiding under a sheet of chipboard at Folkestone on England's south coast, heading for the Channel Tunnel into Europe.
Ramcharan who operates
several businesses in Jamaica including fishing, lumber, hardware and shipping, has a long history of drug trafficking.
He had two previous convictions after being arrested in Florida in 1994 while using the name Donovan Marshall, following a massive cannabis seizure.
He served two years in prison and in 1987 he was arrested along with his brother Leebert in Maine, near the U.S.-Canadian border, while transporting over 150 kilos of cannabis oil by foot across a river in an attempt to get it to Florida.
The Ramcharan brothers who are ranked among the top 10 Jamaican cocaine smugglers, are among the wealthiest people in the resort city of Montego Bay.
Confiscation orders have been issued against Norman Ramcharan and Everton Dennis and the judge ruled that Ramcharan should be deported on completion of his sentence. A confiscation hearing will be held in April 2005.
