Four cannabis plants were found inside tents with dehumidifiers, along with smoking paraphernalia, and various jars and a bag containing herbal cannabis. Officers also found packs of tablets throughout the house. 

Hart was out the island at the time but returned on 5 October and was arrested days later. He answered no comment in interviews.  

Advocate Sam Steel, defending, said his client offered a full apology and had decided to continue self-medicating his trauma after being a passenger in a fatal car accident that year in Thailand – with a family member facing criminal proceedings and the threat of foreign prison as a result.  

His “mental wellbeing was on the floor” and he obtained cannabis and gabapentin in Thailand to treat the pain from the accident and anxiety from the threat of seeing a family member go to jail.  

He returned to the island unannounced following the incident in June 2023 where he claimed his house sitter had been using his home to grow cannabis against his wishes. But Hart “made the regrettable decision” not to report this and instead took on the plants for personal use. 

Pictured: Hart was sentenced in the Royal Court.

“He was presented with the same substance in his home that he used medically abroad,” Advocate Steel said. 

Hart also obtained gabapentin and later Xanax off the black market after hearing it treated depression and anxiety effectively, he added. 

Hart then learned the family member wouldn’t face prison in Thailand and returned to the country for the sentencing hearing, abandoning the plants which explained the deteriorated condition police found them in. 

Advocate Steel said Hart has already paid a price by losing a senior position in the finance industry and his professional qualifications: “His good name has been tarnished”. But he added that the “intelligent, resourceful, and ambitious” Hart had begun training to enter a different sector.   

Judge Catherine Fooks, sentencing, said there wasn’t any evidence to contradict this account but highlighted that the growing operation was “well equipped and resourced” and was found alongside a “significant quantity of controlled drugs”. 

Hart had shown “serious errors of judgement” and “brought ruin to [his] career and shame unto [himself]”, she added, saying cultivation and possession of such quantities “must attract a custodial sentence”. 

But she noted that his character references from family and colleagues described him as a “competent and highly skilled professional”, with the court opting for a more lenient approach based on his circumstances. 

Hart was ordered to perform 240 hours of community as a direct alternative to two-years imprisonment along with a £5,000 fine for the cultivation offence. 

He was given a one-year prison sentence, suspended for two-years, for possession of cannabis to run consecutively, alongside two concurrent one-year prison sentences, also suspended for two-years, for possession of the Class C tablets. 

Forfeiture and destruction of the drugs was ordered.