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Don’t Touch That Corona, Contraband Consumers Will Also Be Charged
posted (August 6, 2020)

And while the familiar regulations for social distancing, curfew, and limits to crowd numbers are coming into effect - one existing law is getting much more strict. It's the one regulating border jumpers and contraband. These outlaw activities have been driving the spike in the north, and today the PM announced draconian measures to crackdown, even on that bottle of corona you've been toasting on social media. Here's more:

Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"The current prescription of a 3 months incarceration sentence in the first instance for any convicted border jumper - 3 months in the first instance and then a year or subsequent offence, we're going to increase that 3-month penalty to 6 months. Also, we are perhaps not by the way of the SI because I'm not certain that we can do that by means of subsidiary legislation but we are going to go to the house and we will make that border jumping offence, you're charged with the offence of border jumping, you will not be able to get bail from the magistrate's court, you will have to go to the supreme court. Anybody found in possession of any contraband item, will be treated as a border jumper and charged as a border jumper. We're advised by the Attorney General's ministry that we can do that by way of the regulations. In any event, we are going to go to the house on the next occasion and we're going to amend the principal legislation so that, we can in cases were as things now stand, people are found in possession of contraband, customs would detain the contraband articles but then the offenders can make some arrangement to pay 3 times the duty or 3 times the value of goods and be allowed to go free, that is absolutely going to change. Starting with putting in place a provision in the regulation that will allow us to treat anybody found in possession of contraband as a border jumper. So, to repeat just to try and be clear, immediately we'll simply treat you if you're found in possession of corona beer for example, that seems to be one the favourite of the pictures that are posted on social media, corona beer seems to be the star of those pictures. Well, you post pictures with corona beer and let us trace that you and let us find you in possession and you're immediately going to be charged as a border jumper."

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