The great-grandson of Sir Winston Churchill pleaded guilty in a court in Australia yesterday to being involved in a multi-million dollar racket involving the drug ecstasy. Nicholas Jake Barton, 33, admitted knowingly taking part in the supply of a commercial quantity of a prohibited drug. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Barton was arrested at his apartment in a Sydney suburb in June after a three-month undercover police operation. About 250,000 ecstasy tablets, 18kg of the powder MDMA used to make the drug, and two industrial pill presses were confiscated in police raids.
The tablets had a street value of $12.5m (more than £6m) and the powder was worth about $2.5m. A large amount of Australian currency was also found.
Barton's mother is Arabella Spencer Churchill, the granddaughter of the war-time prime minister. One of Barton's middle names is Gompo, said to be a tribute to a Tibetan resistance leader, whom Churchill backed in the fight against China's 1949 invasion of the Himalayan kingdom.
Barton had originally been charged with a more serious offence of supplying a large commercial quantity of a prohibited drug, which carried a possible life sentence and £240,000 fine.
After appearing at the district court in Sydney before Judge Greg Hosking, Barton was taken back to Sydney's Parklea jail where he has been held since his arrest.
Barton's father, James, who was in court, said after the hearing that his son had not known the full extent of the ecstasy operation and had made an error which he deeply regretted. He had let his house to acquaintances shortly before it was raided by police as he had been planning to return to Britain for a long holiday.
Charles Waterstreet, Barton's barrister, said: "He had a much narrower role than was originally alleged. He had no idea of the quantity."
Barton spent his early years in squats and communes with his hippie mother after she separated from his father, a Scots headmaster. He emigrated to Australia aged 18, studied marine biology at the University of Launceston, Tasmania, and then spent some time in the film industry. At one point he worked as a pearl farmer in Indonesia. Friends said he never talked about his aristocratic background.
Seven months before Barton was arrested he married his long-term girlfriend, Kim, at the resort of Byron Bay.
Barton will be sentenced on February 22 with his co-accused, Reese Gerard Woodgate, a 42-year-old New Zealander, who has also pleaded guilty.