Man cleared of bringing drugs worth rM18mil into Australia

SINGAPORE: A man accused of bringing A$6mil (RM17.97mil) worth of the drug Ice into Australia has been found not guilty by a Perth jury.

V. Jayakody, a prominent unionist in the 1970s, was arrested in July 2014 at the Perth International Airport after 2.2kg of methylamphetamine was discovered in the lining of the suitcase he brought from Singapore.

The methylamphetamine, known commonly as Ice, was found to be high-grade with a purity of 80%.

However, the 75-year-old has long maintained that he was unaware that there were drugs in the suitcase, claiming he had been “groomed” and “duped” by online scammers, Australian broadcaster ABC News reported.

He told customs officials that the suitcase had been given to him in Shanghai, where he had gone to sign documents for a business deal involving someone named Rolland Edward.

Edward – said to be a banker from Burkina Faso who had earlier agreed to invest US$7mil (RM29.45mil) in Jayakody’s company – had allegedly paid for the latter to travel to Perth to sign and collect other documents for the deal, as well as hand over the suitcase.

Jayakody’s first trial in September last year ended in a hung jury after a 12-member jury could not reach an unanimous decision, a requisite for conviction. A retrial was ordered, with Jayakody remanded pending the second trial.

According to the ABC News, the Supreme Court jury deliberated for a couple of hours on Monday before delivering their verdict.

Prosecutors had argued that Jayakody was “reckless, as to whether there was a substance in the suitcase, and as to whether it was a border-controlled substance”.

During his first trial, Jayakody’s lawyer John Prior told the jury that his client was a trustworthy man with a clean record.

Jayakody was seconded from the Education Ministry to NTUC in 1972 and served as an executive secretary of the Singapore Port Workers Union for 10 years. — The Straits Times/Asia News Network