Joshua Parfitt
THIS is England star Andrew Shim has pleaded with Spanish police to sell off his Mercedes Sprinter and avoid jail following a €88,655 fine for drugs trafficking.
Shim was running a business renting out luxury motorcycles at Spanish race tracks before Granada police found 60kg of marihuana in his transport van at a petrol station in October last year.
A Malaga court let Shim off with a suspended sentence in July after an eight-month stay in prison, on the condition the Nottingham-based actor paid a fine equal to the drugs’ black-market value.
But now Shim, 38, has pled poverty and asked if police can sell his Mercedes. It had been impounded leading to the collapse of his Trackside Hire Ltd business.
If he does not pay, police could issue an international arrest warrant to bring Shim back to Spain and face jail.
“Shim is insisting he doesn’t have the money to settle the fine and has asked for the van that was confiscated to be auctioned off and the proceeds put towards payment,” a judicial source told the Daily Mail.
“The state prosecutor has been asked for a report before the judge makes a final decision.
“If the judge agrees to the money made from any auction of the van being put towards what he owes, and it’s a big if, it’s only going to get him out of a hole for a bit because there’s no way that vehicle is worth anything like €88,000.”
Prices of second-hand Mercedes Sprinter vans begin at around €25,000, however Shim is known to be a car enthusiast and has posted upgrades to his Sprinter on social media.
It comes after Spanish police busted Shim and two associates for handling 59.88kg of marihuana with a black market value of €88,655 on October 20 last year.
Police found 19 packets of the drug after stopping Shim and Michael Regan at a petrol station in Huetor Santillan, near Granada.
The actor, who made his name age 15 in the Shane Meadows’ film A Room for Romero Brass, confessed to being a drug addict and pled guilty to a drug trafficking charge after being warned he could see five years in jail if the case went to full trial.
A second British man convicted alongside Shim asked for imprisonment due to incapability to pay the fine, and the Malaga criminal court warned Shim would also be imprisoned for not paying up.
Shim is most famous for his role as Milky in the 2006 cult classic This is England, in which Milky is violently beaten by a white supremacist.
He also appeared in several advertisements, such as for a South Africa-based shoot for Orange Mobile.
He is an amateur MMA fighter and has a passion for buying and selling luxury cars and motorcycles.
The social media accounts of his Trackside Hire business show shots of Shim with his Mercedes Sprinter and luxury motorcycles at race tracks around Spain.
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