With Geeta Rampersaud

Woman remanded for attempting to ship cocaine to Spain in salon products

GEORGETOWN Magistrate Judy Latchman yesterday remanded 49-year-old Sandra Daniels of Lot 2 Dennis Street, Sophia, Greater Georgetown, who was busted with cocaine in nail buffer on Thursday, May 8, at Guyana Post Office Corporation (GPOC) on Robb Street, Georgetown.

Particulars of the offence against Daniels state that she had in her possession 274 grammes of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.

The unrepresented woman told the court that she works as a receptionist at the Banks DIH, and is a mother of five, the eldest being 30 and the youngest being 20.

She was refused bail on the ground that no special reason was given to the court; the case has been put off to June 2 for report.

Customs Anti Narcotics Unit (CANU) Prosecutor Oswald Messiah told the court that, on the day in question, the defendant had gone to the GPOC with intention to post a carton box to Plaza of De Octubre in Valencia, Spain.

During a procedural check in the presence of the defendant, a quantity of salon products was found in the box, which included false nails, nail decorations and buffers. The CANU officer carried out a further search on the products, and found in the middle of each of the forty-two buffers transparent plastic bags filled with a substance suspected to be cocaine.

During the caution, Daniels said a close male friend from Spain had visited Guyana two weeks ago and had asked her to post the products.

She was told of the offence and arrested, and a complete extraction of the transparent plastic bags amounted to the quantity of cocaine mentioned in the particulars.

Daniels claimed that she could not see with her naked eyes what was in the product. She told Magistrate Latchman that she does not have any prior or pending matters, but it was afterwards revealed that she had spent seven years imprisoned in England for a similar trafficking offence.
Daniels said that although she had been sentenced to seven years in England, she had only served thirty-three months in jail before being deported.