The owner
has to prove
himself
innocent of
knowledge
of the drugs
being carried.
Alan Peat
A MASSIVE drug bust at City Deep of a containerised shipment of 4.5-tons of Mandrax tablets at an estimated street value of about R600-million is rated the biggest single haul ever of drugs in SA.
The shipment - billed as suitcases - was routed from Indonesia, with a transhipment at Singapore to
a K-Line charter ship, Harmony Bridge, and landed at Port Elizabeth.
From there, the container was railed to City Deep on the Roadwing rail account, and hauled by the company to the SACD depot.
But while it was there it got hit by the Scorpions Unit, following an anonymous tip-off to Customs, according to Roadwing's Isobel Louw.
The choice of Port Elizabeth as port of landing was quite clever, she added, avoiding the high-tech scanner at the Port of Durban. This test, however, is only for road vehicles, and the syndicate was doubly clever in routing it by rail.
Customs need another scanner here, said Louw, but cost is the problem.
Following the bust, a Johannesburg-based drug-lord and five associates were arrested, and are awaiting trial on charges of drug trafficking and bribery. On the first offence, according to the Citizen newspaper, a conviction for trafficking under the Drug Act could lead to a 20-year jail sentence or any fine determined by the court.
But in a rather strange twist, the Justice Minister announced he had instructed the Asset Forfeiture Unit to investigate possibly seizing the K-Line charter ship - as a warning, he said, to shipowners that they must take more care about what they carry to SA.
If this rather unusual arrest were to take place, it could have serious consequences. Under the law related to any vehicle used for drug trafficking, FTW was told, the owner has to prove himself innocent of knowledge of the drugs being carried. The penalty for the offence is forfeiture of the vehicle.
K-Line has been informed of this, according to Mike Atter, director of Rennies Ships Agency which acts for the line in SA. But neither K-Line nor ourselves have had communication from any official entity here, he said.
The charter ship has also already left SA shores.
But the feeling in the shipping industry is that the official comment from the justice department might have been made more for its PR effect (that warning to shipowners) than for actual practical effect.
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