Man busted with cocaine gets 4½ years, fined $6.9M

Twenty-eight-year-old Javed Ragnauth of Smythe Street, Charlestown, Georgetown, who was among four persons busted with a quantity of cocaine and marijuana earlier this month, was on Wednesday jailed for four and a half years.

Ragnauth pleaded guilty to two narcotics trafficking charges when he made a virtual appearance before Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan earlier this month from the Lusignan Prison. He was unrepresented by legal counsel.
In relation to the charge of trafficking 3.312 kilograms of cocaine, worth $4,968,000, Ragnauth has been sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, and fined $6,336,000.
And he has been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and fined $129,000 for trafficking 1.520 kilograms of cannabis, valued at $656,000. Both sentences are to run concurrently.
It has been reported that five men and a woman were arrested by ranks of the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) following a surveillance operation conducted on December 2 in the vicinity of Church Street in Georgetown. It involved CANU ranks observing a suspicious transaction, as a result of which the officers pursued Ragnauth to his residence at Smythe Street, Charlestown, where a subsequent search unearthed five brick-like parcels, amounting to 3.3 kilograms of cocaine, and two plastic bags containing 1.520 kilograms of cannabis.
Besides Ragnauth, the others arrested were: Samantha Nascimento, 32, of the said Smythe Street address; Yancy Garraway, 35, of Lot 2 North Road, Bourda Georgetown; and Charles Jones, a 48-year-old miner of Four Miles Housing Scheme in Bartica, Region Seven. They were, however, released after Ragnauth pleaded guilty to the charges.