Son of UK aristocrat on drug charges
The son of a Scottish aristocrat is ‘‘incredibly distressed’’ but innocent of trafficking £2.2 million (NZ$4m) worth of cocaine into Kenya, his family says.
Jack Marrian, 31, the grandson of the sixth earl of Cawdor, who attended a prestigious Kenyan school, is accused of trying to import nearly 100 kilograms of the class A drug in shipping containers.
His father David, an artist, insisted yesterday that his son was innocent.
The haul was found by Kenyan police and United States Drug Enforcement Agency officials in containers that had arrived from Brazil at Kenya’s main seaport last week.
The cocaine was allegedly shipped around the world in containers labelled as carrying sugar destined for Uganda. The prosecution says documents found on the ship used to transport the cargo named Marrian as a director of Mshale Uganda Ltd, the firm that was to receive the containers.
David Marrian, who lives in Kenya, said his son had ‘‘nothing to do’’ with the cocaine.
‘‘The sugar in the containers was being sent to Jack’s company, but he has no involvement in either the packing of the ships or the unloading. The containers are not his. The ship is not his. The fact it is contaminated with cocaine has nothing to do with him.’’
Marrian was born into the famous line of Scottish nobility known as the Clan Campbell of Cawdor. His mother runs an upmarket interior design firm on the outskirts of Nairobi.
On his LinkedIn profile, Marrian describes himself as the head of sugar trading in southeast Africa at ED&F Sugar, a company that ships sugar, molasses and coffee around the world, and the managing director of Mshale Commodities, the Kenyan importer that the prosecution alleges was due to receive the shipment containing the cocaine.
Kenya has become a cocaine distribution hub in recent years. Traffickers from South America are said to take advantage of Nairobi’s extensive air links to Europe and Asia.