JUDGE TELLS DRUG BARON TO PAY UP POUNDS 250,000 PROFIT

Court Strips Jailed Smuggler Of Cannabis Cash

ONE of Scotland's biggest drug barons has been ordered to hand over
pounds 250,000 from his dope-running profits.

John Healy, 41, who is serving 10 years for his part in a major
cannabis smuggling ring, was given a year to hand over the cash.

Arrogant Healy turned and smiled to supporters at the High Court in
Edinburgh as Lord Osborne made the confiscation order - one of the
biggest ever in Scotland.

Healy - reckoned to be the eighth wealthiest criminal in Scotland with
a pounds 2.5million fortune - and two sidekicks were convicted at the
same court last year of bringing massive amounts of cannabis to
Scotland from Morocco via Spain.

Healy's 55-day trial cost around pounds 2million and began with 11 men
facing drugs charges.

However, eight of the accused, including Healy's brother-in-law -
Glasgow businessman Thomas McGraw - were acquitted.

The jury returned a not proven verdict against McGraw, known as The
Licensee, who lives in a luxury home on the outskirts of Glasgow.
Yesterday's pounds 250,000 confiscation follows repeated threats that
drug dealers would have to pay for their crimes.

The trial heard that between January 1994 and September 1997 huge
quantities of cannabis were smuggled into Scotland.

The gang used the cover of a boys' football team minibus which had a
hidden compartment for concealing the drugs.

The scheme was smashed when the minibus was halted on the M74 in
September 1997. A total of 358 bars of cannabis, worth pounds 260,000,
was discovered.

Police believed Healy, of Glasgow, helped finance the smuggling
operation.

After he was convicted, the Crown estimated he had made pounds 766,000
from drug-trafficking. But after negotiations, it was agreed pounds
250,000 should be confiscated.

The largest drugs confiscation order granted by the courts in Scotland
was against Alexander Donnelly, 43.

The heroin dealer, from Balmore in Stirlingshire, was ordered to hand
over assets worth pounds 270,000 by Lord Bonomy in 1997.

As well as his own interests, Healy has stakes in pubs and businesses
run by brother-in-law McGraw.

However the pair fell out over a disputed pounds 1.5million and McGraw
put a pounds 20,000 contract on Healy's head during the row. Healy,
who already had a pounds 100,000 bounty on him from Colombian drug
gangs, hit back by putting a pounds 30,000 contract on McGraw.

Scotland's 10 wealthiest criminals control assets worth around pounds
40million.

McGraw is said to be the wealthiest, worth an estimated pounds
10million.

Second in line is David Santini, a dealer from Lanarkshire worth
pounds 5million, who was jailed for 13 years in 1997.

In all six criminals are valued at more than pounds 4million, with a
further four worth pounds 1million.