Christopher Bee. Picture by Peter Mourant (00718186)

A MILLIONAIRE businessman from Jersey has been found not guilty of conspiring to export £144,000 worth of cannabis into the Island following a ten-day trial in the UK.

Christopher John Bee (43), a former chief executive of courier firm Regency Logistics, was charged after a box of cannabis he thought was full of men’s clothes for a St Helier store was seized at his warehouse in Southampton.

His former friend and co-accused Ian Peter Newbon, who ran the now closed clothes shop Enzo, was jailed for more than two years by Southampton Crown Court earlier this year for trying to smuggle the drugs into Jersey.

Officers from Hampshire’s Serious and Organised Crime Unit swooped on the Southampton freight company and a search found 100 bars of cannabis resin, weighing a total of around 25 kg worth more than £144,000 in Jersey. Mr Bee was arrested and charged with conspiracy to export the class C drug but pleaded not guilty saying that Newbon told him it was a box of clothes for the town shop.

Mr Bee, who always denied the charge of conspiracy to export 24.3 kilos of a class C drug, was acquitted by a jury who reached a unanimous decision in less than an hour. Every day he was supported in court by his 73-year-old father Christopher, and wife Tina who travelled from Jersey for the trial.