Derek Achong

A South African war vet­er­an, whose yacht was found to have an un­li­censed minia­ture can­non, yes­ter­day was or­dered to pay a fine of $35,000. The fine was im­posed by Mag­is­trate Melvin Daniel in the Port-of-Spain Fourth Court on 58-year-old Stephen Clarke-Grey for mak­ing a false de­c­la­ra­tion to Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cers and en­ter­ing T&T with pro­hib­it­ed items.

Clarke-Grey is al­so said to be a for­mer guard at the South African pres­i­den­tial res­i­dence. He and his 33-year-old Brazil­ian wife, Re­na­ta, were ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers of the Cus­toms Ma­rine In­ter­dic­tion Unit (MIU) on Feb­ru­ary 3, on their yacht at Scot­land Bay, Ch­aguara­mas. They al­so had in their pos­ses­sion 194 mus­ket balls, a Rem­ming­ton mus­ket and more than 900 grammes of gun­pow­der.

In ad­di­tion to the charges un­der the Cus­toms Act, the cou­ple faced charges of pos­ses­sion of arms and am­mu­ni­tion. Dur­ing yes­ter­day's sen­tenc­ing ex­er­cise, Daniel dis­missed the arms and am­mu­ni­tion charges but fined Clarke-Grey for the re­main­ing charges. He was fined $20,000 for mak­ing the false de­c­la­ra­tion and $15,000 for en­ter­ing T&T with the pro­hib­it­ed items.

In their mit­i­ga­tion plea, their lawyer, John Heath, ex­plained that the weapons were relics and were be­ing kept by the cou­ple as sou­venirs. Heath al­so claimed the cou­ple had no crim­i­nal in­tent in pos­sess­ing the weapons. Clarke-Grey was giv­en a one-day dead­line to pay the fine. In de­fault he will face three years' im­pris­on­ment with hard labour. At­tor­ney Shirley Shep­pard pros­e­cut­ed.