HEMP GROWER'S NICARAGUA EXPERIENCE LIKE SPY NOVEL

Spent almost a year in jail there but still wants to go back - once
the $188-million lawsuit is settled

GUELPH - Paul Wylie is willing to forgive and forget.

As he sits in the living room of his Guelph home, he makes it very
clear that, given the opportunity, he would return to Nicaragua - the
country he officially sued for $188 million on Nov. 8 of this year.

It's also the country that had him arrested at gunpoint on Christmas
Eve in 1998 and kept him in a dirty federal prison for 11 months. His
story sounds more like an action movie than the tale of a man trying
to do business in a developing country.

"I'd go back," he said. "My family thinks I'm crazy, but I think my
work there is unfinished. I still believe the commercial hemp
operation we were operating there can help the people and the country
in many different ways.

"I know it can work. We were just about to harvest our first crop, but
testing we had done just weeks before that showed promising results.
Then they burned down the operation and threw me in jail."

Despite having government approval to extract oil and other byproducts
from the plants, Wylie and his partners were falsely portrayed as big
international drug smugglers. Their company, Hemp-Agro, lost tractors,
irrigation equipment and tonnes of commercial hemp when the police set
the fields on fire.

At the time, the government said it was the biggest drug bust in
Central American history. Wylie and his partners were charged with
cultivation and drug trafficking, but the Guelph resident was the only
one of his group in the country at the time.

"I was in a cab when a car pulled in front of us and these guys
wearing balaclavas riding motorbikes surrounded us. They all had
machine pistols and they didn't identify themselves as police.

"The cab driver took off. He was scraping the side of his car on an
abutment to try and get away. I heard this 'pop pop' sound, then the
back window of the cab blew out. I had glass down my butt.

"They stopped the car, the cab driver took off and I tried to grab the
handle and open my door. I guess the adrenaline was flowing; it (the
handle) came off in my hands. They reached in and grabbed me and my
feet never touched ground again."

Wylie was taken to jail, had a trial without ever seeing a judge, jury
or lawyer and was sent to a federal prison on Jan. 3, 1999. While
there, he had to pay for his own food and he lost 30 pounds. It took
three months to get a call home and his only regular contact outside
the prison was with his lawyer and a Canadian consulate representative
who took him books to read.

"By the end of the 11 months, I had the largest English library in the
prison," Wylie jokes. "My main focus for those months was just staying
alive. Prisons are a strange place. When you know you're not guilty of
a crime, you tend to spend time with other people in similar
circumstances. Now I know how guys like Steven Truscott and the others
who get put in jail for something they didn't do must feel.

"From May (1999) on, I kept hearing I was going to be released in a
few weeks. Their court of appeal has a three-judge panel and two of
them had already agreed to let me out; the third left the country for
a while to get some plastic surgery done.

"Even if she thought I was guilty, the majority would have got me out,
but they had to wait until she signed off."

When he was finally released on Dec. 3, 1999, he left the country the
next day by crossing the border into Costa Rica with the help of some
crocodile hunters. Wylie and his partners were all officially
exonerated by the highest court in Nicaragua in February 2000.

When he returned in November of this year to file his lawsuit against
the government, his lawyer met him at the airport with armed body
guards. They stayed out of view until they got to court the next day
to file the necessary papers to start procedures.

While there, they drove past the fields Wylie and his partners had
leased for their hemp operation three years ago. Nicaragua was chosen
for the operations because you can grow two full crops a year in that
soil and that climate.

The hemp oil is used to manufacture paints, textiles, cosmetics,
building materials and other commercial products. It had a
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) level of less than two per cent, which is
too low to have any value as a street drug. Marijuana, as a drug,
generally has a THC level of more than 20 per cent.

"It's nothing new. The paints Van Gogh and Rembrandt used were mixed
with hemp oil. It lasts longer and stays sharper than the linseed oil
used now."

"There's a new government there that was put in place because it wants
to improve international trade and get tough on crime," Wylie said.
"The new president's son had visited our operations a number of times
and I'm hoping that will help because he knows we're a legitimate business.

"This is something I know can work. You're talking about a country
with about 90 per cent unemployment that must rely heavily on imported
goods. You can produce a green fuel out of hemp that will cut down on
the oil imports needed to run the country.

"The hemp crop was restoring nutrients in the soil where it was
growing, which means other crops could be grown there. We would be
creating 50 jobs to start in a rural area where no jobs exist. We'd
also be showing the international business community that Nicaragua is
willing to work with them to improve the economy."

Wylie doesn't expect to get the $188 million he asked for in the
lawsuit. Instead, he'd like to encourage the government to give him
20,000 hectares of land not currently being used to develop a large
agricultural operation. There could be 2,000 jobs created by the next
year, using technology tested and proven in Canada.

"About 85 per cent of the land in Nicaragua is decimated," Wylie said.
"We can bring it back to grow cereal crops again. We'll be putting
food on their plates, food in their markets and using grain products
for energy.

"What I went through sounds more like a spy novel than anything. It's
behind me now and it's time to look forward. I want to work with the
Nicaraguan government and people because it can be good for everyone.

"But there are times when I can still smell that prison. . ."