A COURT has ordered a Stanmore man to hand over £300,700 after being convicted of smuggling cannabis worth £5.7 million.

Robert Kalmanson, 56, of Green Verges, Priory Drive, who is serving 11 years for the offence, appeared before Canterbury Crown Court on Thursday.

After he was convicted of smuggling by a jury in August last year Kalmanson was described as an organiser of the drugs run.

He was caught after customs officers at Dover stopped a lorry that had made 14 trips from Spain supposedly carrying tiles for Kalmanson to pass on to a business friend.

The 2,037kg of cannabis was packed into two crates each six feet high.

Richard Benyon, prosecuting, said that customs officials assumed the first of the 14 crossings would have been a dummy run to see what happened.

After getting through unchecked, the quantity of drugs would have been increased on each of the following trips, said Mr Benyon.

Altogether customs officials calculated that 8,946kg of the drug, worth around £8,786,400, had been brought in between October 18 2001 and February 5 2003, said Mr Benyon.

Customs officials calculated that Kalmanson's share of the profits would have been around £800,000.

Recorder Henry Setright QC said he had to take the broad brush approach to confiscation, but one that was cautious and generous to the defendant in order to be fair to him.

He said that Kalmanson had been "an unconvincing and unhelpful witness, prepared to lie and careful to conceal from the court that which he does not wish the court to know."

His defence had been inconsistent, said the recorder, and his evidence had been manifestly unsatisfactory. Kalmanson would have undertaken the enterprise only for substantial rewards and he might have as much as £300,000 in hidden assets, said Mr Setright.

He ordered the confiscation of £300,700 of Kalmanson's assets. He also ruled that the £1.6 million house in which Kalmanson lived was a realisable asset, but he found it had not been bought with money from drugs smuggling.

On the second day of his trial Kalmanson's decree absolute came through after nineteen years of marriage, said Terry Munyard, defending.

Kalmanson's wife had since put the house on the market and was now living elsewhere with their two children, he said.