DRUG-GROWER TO KEEP FARM

A convicted Motueka cannabis grower has been ordered to pay the
Solicitor-General $200,000 for the profits he made from growing and
selling the drug on his rural property.

An application by the Solicitor-General that Graham Donald Sturgeon
forfeit his 107ha property, assessed as being worth about $1.5
million, was dismissed by Judge David McKegg in a reserved decision.

Sturgeon, 50, was convicted in 2005 of cultivating, selling and
supplying cannabis, and money laundering after police raided his
Orinoco Valley farm in 2003.

A jury found Sturgeon guilty of cultivating cannabis from 1997 to
2002. He was sentenced to five years jail, and an application for the
forfeiture of the property to the Crown was made by the Solicitor-General.

In a forfeiture hearing in the Nelson District Court last month,
under the Proceeds of Crimes Act, prosecutor Glen Marshall said the
property was tainted by its use for cannabis production.

Sturgeon's income had equated to $36,000 gross a year for the six
years before the search, and the property had mainly been a cannabis
cultivation and storage base, Marshall said. The property was
assessed as having a potential value of $1.57m, including land and
buildings ($773,000), forestry ($730,000) and carbon credits ($70,000).

The judge valued the cannabis recovered by police in 2003 at $96,000,
but said the value of the offending, in relation to the worth of the
property, was relatively low. He found an order for sale was out of
proportion to the offence.

However, he was satisfied Sturgeon had benefited from the cannabis
operation and ordered he pay $200,000 to the Solicitor-General by October 1.