Champion powerboat racer and boatwright Kirk Roberts was smacked with a ten-year prison sentence yesterday in Supreme Court.

Justice Norma Wade-Miller said Roberts' conspiracy was "as serious as any that can be imagined", adding: "You played a central role in a complicated conspiracy to have illegal drugs brought to Bermuda. You instigated it and you masterminded it."

Appearing frail and thin in HM Prison's remand orange Roberts - who wears an eye patch after a work related accident last year - declined to make comment on his own behalf.

Roberts, 40, of West Side Road, Sandys, was convicted last month by a unanimous jury of conspiring with Vincentian Alphonso Holder and others not before the court to import 200 pounds of marijuana.

The sentence fell within the recommendation of Prosecutor Shade Subair who asked Justice Wade-Miller to consider a sentence between ten and 14 years.

Defence attorney Mark Pettingill balked at the suggested sentence, pointing out Holder received a term of just four years for his role in the conspiracy, and characterised the prosecution as part of a conspiracy to get his client.

The sentence handed down on Roberts yesterday marked his first criminal conviction.

In 1997, his parents Barbara and William Roberts were convicted of possession, handling and possession with intent to supply of 30 pounds of cocaine in a case defence lawyer Richard Hector suggested resulted out of Police "vendetta" against Kirk.

Both of Roberts' parents were handed down 12-year sentences and their convictions were upheld on appeal.

Kirk Roberts was never charged with any crime in relation to the cocaine found in the refrigerator of the family's West Side Road home, although Mr. Hector argued "there was a third person involved in this whole thing not before you and he has left his parents to face the music".

Mr. Pettingill yesterday argued Roberts' sentence should not be so "out of whack" with his co-conspirator especially since other co-conspirators received immunity deals.

"To come along and ask for a sentence of three times that of Holder, I say that is wrong," he said.

Over the course of Roberts and Holders' trial, it emerged that Roberts hired a German sailboat owner - Heinz (Henry) Golembeck - to bring marijuana to the Island in early 2000.

Golembeck testified that he sailed the Caribbean with Bermudian Winston Robinson in search of the drugs for almost a year.

The very week Robinson's name was called in the Roberts trial, he was arrested in St. Maarten on a boat with 10,000 pounds of cannabis. Robinson is awaiting trial in that matter.

Over the time period Golembeck and Robinson were ripped off for $72,000 in Antigua, chased the wrong drug in Nevis and missed a connection off Haiti when the boat bringing drugs was nabbed by the US Coast Guard.

The court heard that Roberts supported the men with monetary wire transfers until a buy was eventually established in St. Vincent from a dealer known as "Benji the Roots Man".

When Golembeck and Robinson sailed from St. Vincent with the drugs, Holder was said to have come on board to protect Benji's interests.

Even if the court accepted Holder was a minor player, Golembeck was not, Mr. Pettingill argued.

"He's off living merrily in Germany with the money he seemed to get from drug running to Bermuda," he said.

"Is that something this court can take into account?" Justice Wade-Miller asked. "Is there an authority for those who get immunity deals?"

Giving evidence in the trial, Golembeck told the court he voluntarily approached US drug enforcement agents in Barbados and told them everything of his many years of Caribbean drug running.

DEA agents directed Bermuda Police to Golembeck and he turned evidence on Roberts and Holder in exchange for immunity.

Mr. Pettingill argued during the trial the entire operation was geared to "get Kirk Roberts" whom Police have been watching for many years.

He argued yesterday that the Crown's current attempts to seize Roberts assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act are simply another element of the myth that Roberts is a drug kingpin.

The Crown will be seeking to seize all Roberts' assets - including real estate, his boat yard, boats, vehicles and monies held in trust.

"That is the point of the recent monetary application," Mr. Pettingill said. "They expect to find hundreds of thousands sitting somewhere. But it didn't happen that way."

As the drugs were never recovered, Mr. Pettingill suggested, the 200 pounds of marijuana was just another portion of the myth.

"Kirk Roberts didn't plan what the Crown alleged all on his own," Mr. Pettingill said. "Heinz Golembeck contributed to the `get Kirk Roberts show'. It's farcical this individual should take this degree of culpability. An agent of admitted culpability gets away and the Crown asks that the local boy gets ten years."

Mr. Pettingill said yesterday an appeal on Roberts conviction is in the works. If that appeal fails he intends to appeal Roberts' sentence as well.