SENTENCING STATEMENTS

Upon sentencing, Lord Arthurson made the following remarks:

"Ian McIntyre, Kieran Doherty, Calum McKelvie, Jack Sanderson and Martin James Tracey, at a continued preliminary hearing at Glasgow High Court on 12 June 2026 you each tendered a plea of guilty in adjusted terms to a charge libelling the contravention of section 28(1) of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 regarding your involvement in serious organised crime between 11 April 2023 and 29 November 2024, a period of some 18 months.

"You, Mr McIntyre and Mr Doherty, were involved in the transfer and possession of criminal property, namely sums of money representing the proceeds of crime obtained through the sale and supply of controlled drugs.

"You, Mr McKelvie, Mr Sanderson and Mr Tracey, were involved in various tasks in relation to being concerned in the sale and supply of controlled drugs, contrary to sections 4(3)(a) and (b) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, including the collection, transportation, adulteration, pressing, packaging, distribution and sale of the class A controlled drug cocaine.

"A 37 page agreed factual narrative was read into the court record on the date of your pleas.  I do not propose to rehearse that extended history of this case.  Let me instead attempt to summarise the main features.

"Albeit that you have each pled guilty in respect of the separate roles played by you as individuals, you were all, for the period libelled, involved as members of an organised criminal group which operated the large-scale supply of controlled drugs and the laundering of the cash which was collected as a result of that supply operation.  This was drug trafficking played out on a grand scale, in the course of which you implemented a system of delivery, of cash and drugs, dependent on the presentation of a token as an indicator of involvement in, or membership of, your criminal group.  You, Mr McKelvie, Mr Sanderson and Mr Tracey, operated, to a greater or lesser degree, as couriers.  You, Mr Sanderson and Mr Tracey, were also actively engaged in the cocaine processing factory operated by your group from a property in Tresta Road, Glasgow.  You, Mr McIntyre and Mr Doherty, were involved in the transfer and laundering of substantial cash sums which were intrinsically related to the trafficking operation.

"To give some practical understanding of the scale of this organised trafficking operation, the maximum potential realisable value of the cocaine recovered during the period of the libel, on my calculation based on the figures set out in what is undoubtedly a detailed and complex agreed factual narrative, was £3,276,400.  The cash recovered or identified in the course of the operation during the same period was some £1,041,770.  At the drugs factory itself, officers attending on 23 May 2024 found you, Mr Sanderson and Mr Tracey, and one other male, wearing gloves and industrial respirators, amongst blocks of white powder, a microwave, an oven and a hydraulic press, with large industrial fans operating throughout the blacked out property.  The strong smell of chemicals emanating from within the property was in due course identified by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service as acetone.

"You are all young men in your early to mid‑30s.  Much of the mitigation which has been cogently offered on behalf of each of you this morning by your respective senior counsel contains overlapping themes.  Most of you have partners and young children.  Most of you have candidly expressed some degree of remorse for and insight into the harm caused by your offending behaviour.  You have positive employment histories and stable family backgrounds. Your respective pathways into this offending are set out in the background reports which are now available.  Some of you have lodged written character references. You have all been assessed as presenting either a low or a moderate/medium risk of reoffending. Your criminal histories are either non-existent or very limited and non-analagous.  Only one of you has previously served a custodial sentence, namely you Mr Sanderson, who served 18 months for a crime of aggravated violence with a weapon arising from a conviction on indictment in 2010. Each of your senior counsel has properly stressed your own limited roles in this criminal venture.

"You were all, however, plainly in this for the money, as it were, and for that financial gain you all ran the same risk of detection, for which each of you will now require to pay the appropriate price in the form of the imposition by the court of significant custodial disposals today.  I propose to treat all of you in the same manner.  You each played an active and vital part in the activities of the organised crime group of which you were all members.  The scale and reach of the trafficking project in which you were so engaged was substantial and operated over a sustained period.  The sums of cash and class A controlled drugs recovered are measurable in millions of pounds. These figures represent the suffering of the many individuals and families affected by the misuse of the addictive drugs produced and sold by your criminal group. This was not a victimless crime which was perpetrated by you; far from it.

"Turning now to disposal, for each of you I have selected a notional headline custodial tariff of 6 years, which notional period will be reduced due to the timing and undoubted utility of your guilty pleas to a period of 4 years and 6 months, representing the allowance in this case, on a broad axe basis, of a full utility reduction for pleas tendered at a first preliminary hearing.  You will each, accordingly, on charge 2 of this indictment, serve a sentence of 4 years and 6 months imprisonment, duly backdated to the date of your conviction and initial remand into custody by the court, namely to 12 June 2026.

"Finally, the court minute accompanying this hearing will set out timetables for future hearings for confiscation proceedings in respect of you, Mr McIntyre and Mr Doherty, and for Crown applications for Serious Crime Prevention Orders in respect of all of you. A confiscation hearing will be held at Edinburgh High Court at 10am on 19 October 2026 and consideration of the said serious crime prevention order applications will be continued for resolution of final orders to a hearing at Glasgow High Court at 9.30am on 13 August 2026."

27 July 2026