Captain gets 13 years for smuggling cocaine

HALIFAX — A potential payoff of more than $500,000 motivated a Canadian sailboat captain to smuggle 250 kilograms of cocaine into Nova Scotia from a small Caribbean island, a judge said Friday as he sentenced Jacques John Grenier to 13 years in prison.

“It was just greed, Mr. Grenier, plain and simple,” provincial court Judge Gregory Lenehan told the 69-year-old accused.

An expert testified that the drugs — probably purchased for about $3 million from a Mexican drug cartel — had an estimated street value of $20 million.

Grenier, who moved to Nova Scotia in 2015 and was unemployed, had earlier pleaded guilty to two charges: possession for the purposes of trafficking cocaine and importing cocaine. A third charge, conspiracy to import cocaine, was withdrawn.

Lenehan said he took into account Grenier’s age, his guilty pleas and the fact that he has skin cancer But the judge said a double-digit sentence was needed to discourage others from using Nova Scotia’s craggy coastline as a “soft target” for drug smuggling.

“You’re coming to your sunset years,” Lenehan told Grenier, a tall but thin man with a swarm of surgical scars above his left eye. “You don’t have 30 or 40 years left.”

Grenier, a resident of Hubbards, N.S., with no prior criminal record, was arrested Sept. 3 after officers with the Canada Border Services Agency boarded his 32-foot sailboat Quesera at a marina east of Halifax. Court heard Grenier had sailed the vessel solo from the Dutch side of Sint Maarten, an island east of the Virgin Islands.

The officers found bricks of cocaine hidden beneath a sealed bed frame in the forward sleeping quarters of the Canadianregistered vessel. The RCMP were called in, Grenier was arrested and more cocaine was found hidden throughout the boat.

The judge concluded Grenier was one of the “middle players” in the smuggling operation.

However, federal Crown attorney Glen Scheuer argued Grenier was in fact a trusted member of an organized crime ring, noting that Grenier admitted he was responsible for paying the cartel for the drugs and that he was the only person aboard the sailboat when it left the Caribbean. There was no indication where the drug payment originally came from.

When asked if he wanted to address the court, Grenier stood to offer a brief statement.

“I’m here to be judged and I’m ready to start my time,” he said in a clear voice, a baggy grey sweater hanging loosely around his narrow shoulders. “I’ll work hard while I’m incarcerated. … When I get out, I’ll be a stronger and healthier Canadian taxpayer.”

In an agreed statement of facts, court heard Grenier had purchased the boat after he moved to Nova Scotia and later sailed to Sint Maarten in August 2016.

Grenier admitted that he picked up the cocaine from a fishing trawler off the coast of Venezuela in international waters last August, then sailed back to Sint Maarten, where he purchased provisions for the voyage home to Nova Scotia. After he arrived at East River Marine in Hubbards, he left to pick up a rental car and 10 large hockey bags, court heard.

When he returned about 10 p.m., officers were waiting for him.