Mateo Allmunca (Image: Dyfed-Powys Police)
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A 24-year-old Albanian national has been sentenced to two years in prison after police discovered a cannabis growing operation inside a flat in Llanelli’s North Dock area.
Swansea Crown Court heard that Mateo Allmunca had been working as a gardener at the factory to pay off a £20,000 debt owed to the criminal gang that smuggled him into the UK.
The operation
Prosecutor Abu Hussain told the court that officers carried out a warrant at a property on Pentre Doc y Gogledd on March 25 this year. Upon entering, they were “immediately met by the smell of cannabis.”
A total of 89 plants at varying stages of growth were recovered from three separate rooms, along with associated cultivation equipment. The electricity supply to the flat had also been interfered with, with the meter bypassed. Police valued the crop at up to £82,000.
The arrest
Allmunca was not inside the property when it was searched, but residents nearby were able to identify him as someone they had seen regularly entering and leaving the address. After being located and detained, he told officers he had travelled to Llanelli from Swansea to go to the beach – but a search found he was carrying a key to the flat.
Background
In his police interview, the defendant disclosed that he had paid £20,000 to be transported to the UK from Albania and had been in the country for around 12 months. He had initially been living in Birmingham before being moved to Llanelli, and said threats had been made against him and his family.
His guilty plea to being concerned in the production of cannabis was entered on the basis that he had been repaying his debt at a rate of £3,000 a month by looking after the plants.
Mitigation
Allmunca has no previous convictions in the UK. Details of any foreign convictions were not available.
Defence counsel Matt Murphy said his client was a single man who had come to the UK to escape an “impoverished life” in Albania, where he had been earning as little as 200 euros per month. He told the court Allmunca had made the decision to leave “out of desperation” and had exercised “little or no” influence over the wider growing operation.
Sentencing
Recorder Mark Powell KC said the reality was that Allmunca had entered the UK as an “economic migrant” after paying £20,000 to a criminal gang to arrange his journey. He said it was the same organisation that had then put Allmunca to work cultivating cannabis.
After applying a one-quarter reduction for his guilty plea, the recorder sentenced Allmunca, of no fixed abode, to 24 months in prison. He will serve 40 per cent of that term in custody before becoming eligible for release on licence.
Recorder Powell told the defendant he was liable to be deported following the completion of his sentence.
