The defence team representing jailed entertainer Buju Banton says it has dug up more dirt on the informant who helped United States (US) federal agents build a drug case against the reggae artiste.
A report in the Tampa Tribune newspaper quotes Buju’s lawyers saying that the informant has been paid US$3.3 million for helping US law enforcement in numerous cases over several years.
Buju’s lawyers made the revelation in a Florida court on Thursday.
An attorney for the entertainer whose given name is Mark Myrie Buju Banton, whose real name is Mark Anthony Myrie, says he plans to argue that the singer was entrapped by the informant, who pestered him for months to join him in a cocaine deal.
Buju is being held without bail on charges of conspiring to distribute cocaine as well as aiding and abetting his co-defendants in possessing a firearm during the course of cocaine distribution.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has said in court filings that Banton contacted a confidential informant about a possible cocaine purchase.
The next day, Buju and other men met with the informant at a restaurant, where the DEA and local police had set up video and audio surveillance.
Defense attorney David Oscar Markus told U.S. Magistrate Thomas Wilson on Thursday that prosecutors have not provided enough information about the informant for him to be prepared to cross-examine him at Buju’s trial scheduled for April 19.
Mr. Markus outlined information that the government has given him about the informant that he was paid more than US$35,000 for his cooperation in the case against Buju Banton and is also paid on a contingency basis, receiving a portion of the money the judge orders the defendant to forfeit.
The informant was convicted in South Florida in 1993 of distributing cocaine in a case that brought a minimum mandatory prison sentence of 10 years.
He transported large amounts of cocaine and marijuana from 1984 to 1993 and is a legal, permanent resident of the US from Colombia.
It was also revealed that the informant is in involved in a tax dispute with the IRS.
He has also worked with the prosecutor in Myrie’s case for more than 10 years.
But Mr. Marcus says he needs more details, such as details about the tax case, information on other cases the informant has worked and specifics on his criminal history.