Proceeds of crime or drug trafficking - assisting another to avoid prosecution - no requirement for Crown to prove that property actually proceeds of crime or drug trafficking

R v Montilla and others: CA (Lord Justice Scott Baker, Mr Justice Jackson and Mr Justice Hunt): 3 November 2003

The nine defendants were charged with offences under section 49(2) of the Drug Trafficking Act 1994 and section 93C(2) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.

They were alleged to have concealed, disguised, converted or transferred property knowing, or having reason to suspect, that the property represented another person's proceeds of criminal conduct or drug trafficking for the purpose of assisting any person to avoid prosecution.

At a preparatory hearing the judge ruled that the prosecution was required to prove that the property, etcetera, being converted was in fact the proceeds of crime or drug trafficking.

The Crown appealed against that ruling under section 35 of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1994.

David Perry and Andrew Bird (instructed by the Solicitor, Customs & Excise) for the Crown; Gibson Grenfell QC and David Whittaker (assigned by the Registrar of Criminal Appeals) for the defendants.

Held, allowing the appeal, that whereas subsection (1) of each section referred expressly to the defendant's proceeds of crime or drug trafficking and made it an offence to deal in certain ways with that property, subsection (2) was phrased entirely differently; that where a defendant had reasonable grounds to suspect that the money was the proceeds of crime or drug trafficking it made no moral difference to his conduct that the Crown could not prove the source of the money; that it placed an unnecessary burden on the Crown to require proof of the source of the money; and that, accordingly, the judge's ruling was wrong.