BUILDER Stuart Lee has been sentenced to 31 months in prison for importing cannabis. When Customs officers stopped Lee, 40, at the White Rock in March, they found two bars of cannabis resin with an estimated street value of £3,900 concealed in sponges in a box in the boot.

During a Royal Court trial, Lee, c/o States Prison, pleaded guilty to importing the Class B drug, but consistently denied that he was involved in trafficking.

In sentencing, Deputy Bailiff Geoff Rowland said any credit that the nine jurats could have given for his guilty plea should be minimal because Lee had denied any knowledge of a sponge found in his bedroom that was cut in a similar way to those found in his car.

Father-of-two Lee had claimed during cross-examination that someone who wanted him caught planted the sponge in his room.

Nor was he prepared to name the person whom he said he met in Town and to whom he would have delivered the cannabis.

Defence advocate Sara Mallett said her client had made a greedy and thoughtless decision to import the drugs, almost half a kilo, for £1,000.

Lee, from Kingston-upon-Hull, admitted that he was aware of the island’s strict sentencing policy as he had been working on various building sites since his initial arrival in May 2002. He also claimed to have worked evenings and weekends ‘cash in hand’, which was why he had deposited large amounts of money into a local bank account.

During a two-month period, he paid in £4,900, £1,900 and £1,100 which, the prosecution said, was the proceeds of trips to Hull to collect drugs and sell them in Guernsey.

Although the deposits coincided with visits to the UK, Lee claimed that he had taken the money out of his account there and saved it together with that from casual labour.

Nobody from the building sites was prepared to back up his claim for fear of reprisals from the authorities for unpaid tax, he claimed.

Under the island’s drug-trafficking laws, Lee has already been ordered to pay the Crown £9,923.35, which it deemed to be the proceeds of his crimes, and the car he used for the importation, worth £1,300, was also seized.

Lee had no relevant previous convictions and his sentence will run from the date of his arrest, 26 March.

A drug-destruction order was also made.