Free to live the high life, £45m cannabis smuggler
SCOTLAND’S soft touch justice system faced a humiliating blow yesterday after it emerged that prosecutors have abandoned an 11-year battle to extradite a drug smuggler.
Dutchman Christian Ekkebus was sentenced to 14 years in 2000 – reduced to ten on appeal – after a record-breaking £45million cannabis bust.
Ekkebus fled to his native Netherlands in 2005 on a fake passport while on weekend leave from Castle Huntly prison, near Dundee.
But Dutch police refused to execute a European arrest warrant (EAW) because of their liberal laws on the class-B narcotic.
Now, Crown officials have dropped all outstanding charges against the 44-year-old, despite spending more than £1million of taxpayers’ cash on his High Court trial and a legal bid to have him returned.
After learning he was no longer a
‘Dutch courts were not interested’
wanted man, Ekkebus, one of six men wanted by Police Scotland’s Fugitives Unit, told the Sunday Mail: ‘Scotland spent a lot of money prosecuting me, then six weeks of trial and lots of lawyers. But the Dutch courts were not interested.
‘It’s daft but it was the biggest drugs haul in Scottish history – maybe it still is. Hey, I broke a record – that’s nice.’
Ekkebus was arrested on a yacht 120 miles off Aberdeen, while taking 8.5 tons of the drug from Morocco to the Netherlands.
At the time of his escape, he was five months from being freed on parole and had been moved to Castle Huntly in early 2005 as part of his preparations for release.
When Crown officials tried to extradite Ekkebus, they came up against the relaxed Dutch attitude to cannabis, which can be sold legally in licensed cafes and bars.
Although an EAW was issued for Ekkebus, the Dutch police weren’t obliged to arrest him. And a new agreement between the UK and Dutch governments, which could have allowed Ekkebus to serve the remainder of his sentence in his homeland, could not be agreed.
Ekkebus now lives in the town of Den Helder with his new partner Diana Van Kesteren and said he had left his criminal life behind.
He added: ‘Life is good. I’m happy. I have two daughters and a young granddaughter. I have my own business fixing and selling secondhand washing machines. Every now and then, someone asks me to do a [drugs] run but I say no.
‘When I talk to younger people about this, I tell them crime isn’t worth it. Some of the stuff I did was exciting, a bit of action and danger, like a movie. But when I look back, it wasn’t worth the risk.’
Labour justice spokesman Claire Baker MSP said: ‘People will be rightly concerned that huge amounts of public money have been spent on a case which has ultimately been abandoned. Justice, as directed by a Scottish court, has not been served and lessons need to be learned from this.’
A spokesman for the Crown Office said: ‘After careful consideration of all the facts and circumstances of the case, taking into account the time elapsed since the individual absconded and the lack of a realistic prospect of extradition from Holland due to the length of sentence that had been served in Scotland, the procurator fiscal instructed that the warrant be withdrawn and proceedings brought to an end.’