SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On sentencing, Lord Arthurson said:

“Dale Allan Cleeton, Calvin Boyd Begbie, Fraser Boyd and Mitchel Whyte, on 3 May 2024 at a preliminary hearing at Glasgow High Court you each tendered a plea of guilty to charge 2 on the present indictment, in various amended terms, the offence in that charge being your involvement in serious organised crime contrary to section 28 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010.

You were, by those pleas, accepting your individual involvement in an organised crime group, the principal activity of which was the supply of the class A controlled drug cocaine in the Edinburgh and Lothian areas.  You each had a different role within the group and have pled guilty to involvement over greater or lesser time periods.  During January and February 2022, however, when you were all involved, you were turning over, as it were, some 6 kilos of cocaine per month, representing a turnover on the weights supplied of up to £216,000 per month.  You, Cleeton and Begbie, have pled guilty to the collection, movement and storage of money in such large amounts that your group required the use of a money counting machine, and you have all of course pled guilty to being concerned in the supply of cocaine during the relevant periods.

Dale Cleeton, you are aged 31.  You have to date accrued 30 groups of previous convictions and served 8 prior custodial sentences.  In April 2021 you were sentenced to 45 months imprisonment at Edinburgh High Court for being concerned in the supply of the class A controlled drugs cocaine and ecstasy.  You were therefore serving a High Court prison sentence for class A drug trafficking throughout the period of the libel in this case.  You were the leading member and driving force behind this group, notwithstanding that you were a serving prisoner.  You exercised oversight over the criminal activities of the group in what was very much a central and directing role.

Calvin Begbie, you are aged 29.  You have to date accrued 4 groups of previous convictions, one of those from August 2023 relating to flying a drone over HMP Edinburgh to smuggle cocaine and mobile phones into the prison.  You have served no prior custodial sentence.  Your role was to oversee the activities of the group at the instigation and instruction of Cleeton, with whom you were in regular contact throughout the period libelled.

Fraser Boyd, you are aged 51 and have a single non‑analogous previous conviction from 2015.  You allowed your home to be used to store quantities of cocaine and associated paraphernalia.  You received a wage and played no part in the preparation of drugs for onward supply or in the supply of drugs to purchasers.

Mitchel Whyte, you are aged 24 and are a first offender.  You supplied cocaine to end users in East Lothian as well as to another in the supply chain and collected and accounted for payments from them.

Criminal justice social work reports have been prepared in respect of each of you.  I have considered carefully the detailed terms of these reports together with certain references and other documents tendered to the court.  In addition I have listened with care to the submissions in mitigation advanced on your behalf by your respective counsel this morning.  I propose to take into account all of the points made in that material and in the course of these submissions in determining appropriate disposals for each one of you in this case.

I have concluded without difficulty that, standing the gravity of the offending to which you have each pled guilty, and taking into account your respective roles and the varying time periods of your involvement, the only appropriate disposal for each of you requires to be a custodial one.  This was a prolonged and extensive commercial class A controlled drug trafficking operation, with operations being directed from Cleeton’s prison cell, overseen by Begbie, over a wide area on an almost industrial scale, serving the purposes of serious organised crime.

You each tendered your respective pleas of guilty to various forms of charge 2 of this indictment at the preliminary hearing and are entitled therefore to receive discounted sentences in respect of the utility of those pleas.

Dale Allan Cleeton, you will serve a sentence of imprisonment of 7 years, discounted from a period of 10 years, being the statutory maximum sentence available to the court under section 28 of the 2010 Act.  I take into account in selecting that extended discounted period the period that you spent in custody in early 2023, which amounts to a period almost the equivalent of 6 months.  This sentence will be backdated to 3 May 2024 when your plea was tendered and your bail was revoked.

Calvin Boyd Begbie, you will serve a sentence of imprisonment of 6 years, discounted from a period of 8 years.  This sentence will also be backdated to 3 May 2024, being the date of your initial remand into custody in these proceedings.

Fraser Boyd, you will serve a sentence of imprisonment of 3 years, discounted from a period of 4 years.  This sentence will also be backdated to 3 May 2024, being the date of your own remand into custody.

Mitchel Whyte, you will serve a sentence of imprisonment of 32 months, discounted from a period of 4 years, having regard to the particular background to your own plea of guilty.  You have remained on bail throughout these proceedings.  This sentence will accordingly run from today.

Finally, I will grant the Crown applications for Serious Crime Prevention Orders in respect of you Dale Cleeton and Calvin Begbie for a period of 3 years.”

7 June 2024