Cannabis kingpin Peter Wellman James pleads guilty to commercial drug supply

A Darwin drug kingpin has ‘lost everything’ and is now penniless following the collapse of his $20m cannabis empire and the seizure of more than $850,000 in assets, a court has heard.

DARWIN drug kingpin Peter Wellman James has “lost everything” and is now penniless following the collapse of his $20m cannabis empire and the seizure of more than $850,000 in assets, a court has heard.

James pleaded guilty to commercial drug supply, conspiracy and dealing with property in the commission of an offence, before prosecutors successfully seized two “crime used” suburban residential properties.

But in a sentencing hearing in the Supreme Court on Thursday, Crown prosecutor David Dalrymple said it was not accepted that the seizures had left the former drug baron destitute.

Mr Dalrymple said while James had co-operated in the seizure proceedings and should still receive an “appreciable discount”, there had also been “large amounts of money being channelled through both Mr James’s (legitimate) businesses and through the criminal operations”.

Mr Dalrymple said James still had an interest in the Nook Cafe in Palmerston as well as “access to land overseas in Bali”.

Peter Wellman James in happier times.

“To take an extreme example, if Clive Palmer expends vast amounts of money on political advertising in the recent election and then, as it’s been reported, sells off a few million dollar mansions to offset that,” he said.

“That doesn’t hurt him to the same degree as the loss of properties like that would hurt a person who only had those things.”

In response, James’s barrister, David Edwardson QC said his client was “no Clive Palmer” and the value of the seized properties represented “a very significant amount indeed” for him.

“Effectively, he’s lost everything, and the fact of him having lost everything is a very significant mitigating factor, and when we say ‘everything’ we mean a very significant amount,” he said.

“It’s the amount that informs your honour as to the extent to which we say he’s entitled to get the benefit of that mitigating factor and it should not be minimised in the way that my learned friend seeks to draw some sort of analogy with Clive Palmer.”

Darwin cannabis kingpin Peter Wellman James. Picture: Supplied/Facebook

Mr Edwardson said James “does not own property in Bali” and had “no involvement” in the Nook Cafe.

“That’s not in his hands, it’s not in his name,” he said.

“The business itself, insofar as it exists, is being operated, as I understand it, by his daughter.”

In adjourning the hearing for sentencing on Wednesday, Justice Peter Barr said it remained unclear on the evidence exactly what assets, if any, James retained.

“I don’t know that I can accept, because it’s contested, that Mr James has lost everything he owned but, at the same time, I don’t know what vast empire of assets he might have had,” he said.