Charges against Bequia couple in $2 million cocaine case withdrawn

The Prosecution has withdrawn its case against two Bequia residents who had been charged with possession of 53 pounds of cocaine, estimated to have a street value of over two million dollars.

On November 20 last year, Shari Ollivierre and Aldo Osborne, a divorced couple, were brought to the Serious Offences Court charged with three offences.

These were that they were on November 15, 2017 in possession of 53 pounds of the controlled drug, with the intent to supply and having the drug in their possession for drug trafficking. Lastly, they were charged with, between November 13 and 15, conspiring to commit the offence of drug trafficking.

The two had been allowed bail in the sum of $200,000, the approximation for the drugs’ street value being given as $2,016,000.

The Preliminary Inquiry into the case began this Wednesday, and ended after the analysis report on the 21 packages of cocaine from the lab was read in court.

Instead of the current 2009 Act being cited on the report, the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1990 Chapter 219 was named.

Soon after this was revealed, Senior Prosecutor Adolphus Delplesche indicated that he would not go any further with the case.

Chief Magistrate Rechanne Browne-Matthias told both parties that they were “free to go.” Ollivierre and Osborne shuffled slowly out of the courtroom, pausing to look questioningly at their defence lawyers Kay Bacchus-Baptiste and Grant Connell.