Club dancer cleared of drug smuggling

A Romanian dancer has been acquitted of drug smuggling after a court was not convinced that she was aware that a package she had taken delivery of, contained mephedrone (Meow Meow).

26-year-old Ana Maria Beatrice Ciocanel, previously a dancer earning “€4,000 to €5,000 a month” in Maltese clubs, was arraigned in 2011 and had pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to import mephedrone, importation of mephedrone, selling mephedrone and being in possession of a psychotropic substance without the necessary authorisation.

Inspector Pierre Grech had testified how Customs officials had intercepted a parcel mailed from Prague addressed to a certain Rodney Andrew Molt, who lived in the same apartment as Ciocanel.

A controlled delivery was set up and a policeman, posing as a postman delivered a dummy package on the 5th March 2011. Ciocanel was arrested upon delivery. During her interrogation, said the inspector, the accused had candidly admitted to occasionally using what she described as “legal drugs,” bought from a shop in Romania. In fact she recognised a bag of “Flower Magic” recovered by police from her house and said that she had ordered two bags of the white powder in the past, which she described as “like magic, legal stuff.” One bag was worth €15, she said.

She insisted however that it was her boyfriend who had ordered this parcel claiming to have been abroad on the date.

Ciocanel denied that a bag of white powder recovered from her house contained cocaine, insisting that rolled up banknotes also found there were used for insufflating the Flower Magic substance. Laboratory tests however confirmed the presence of cocaine. Mephedrone was also found to be present. The packets containing Flower Magic Powder were not found to contain any controlled substances.

The accused denied, several times, suggestions that she had told police that she sold legal drugs for parties, but had said that the drugs were legal and found in Romanian shops.

The drugs were ordered “just to have fun with friends” and not for resale. She initially claimed that two or three Romanian girls had given her the money and asked her to order some for her, but later admitted that she had only said this to help Molt.

She claimed to have been living with Molt for two and a half weeks at the time and had just discharged herself from hospital after a suicide attempt. The powder, she said, was an “ethno-botanic substance” made from plants grown in Scotland and was sold in tanning salons there. She likened it to caffeine and said that she used the stimulant due to the late hours she worked in the club.

She insisted that she had not ordered the Flower Magic Powder online, saying it could easily be bought from any shop in Romania and Scotland.

Molt, who had been imprisoned for six years for his part in this operation, also testified. He told the court that Ciocanel, by then his fiancée, knew nothing about the parcels as she did not live in his house all the time. In fact, she did not approve of his drug abuse, which he said he used at work to keep him alert, like caffeine. The mephedrone had not been ordered, but had been included in the package as a “free sample”, he claimed.

Magistrate Miriam Hayman noted that the accused’s and Molt’s testimony were, for the large part, congruent and that no clear evidence of Ciocanel’s involvement with the importation had been presented. Furthermore, Molt had accepted full responsibility for the possession of mephedrone. The court said it could not, beyond reasonable doubt, link Ciocanel to its presence at her home, declaring Ciocanel to be extraneous to the importation of mephedrone and acquitting the accused of the charges.