A man is in court after being charged for growing tobacco
A PROPERTY where 35,000 tobacco plants were growing caught on fire, exposing one man’s secret operation.
A MAN who illegally grew 35,000 tobacco plants is facings up to two years in jail.
Abud El Hamid El Kerdi, 29, will be sentenced today in Victorian County Court for growing the plants, worth millions, in Victoria’s West.
The tobacco plants were discovered in January 2014 after the property on Geelong-Ballan Road in Moorabool went up in flames.
The property had three large hothouses.
When the CFA and Victoria police responded to the fire, they found the seedling plants in the hothouses.
Two months later the property was raided and the 35,000 tobacco plants were counted.
The plants were about two metres high and generated 35,760 kilograms of green tobacco.
Authorities found up to 4361 kilograms of dried tobacco.
Under this operation, the Federal Government could have lost a whopping $2.2 million in potential taxes if the illegal tobacco had been sold.
The man faced two charges of producing and manufacturing tobacco in Moorabool without the authorisation to do so.