Postojna hydroponic grower gets 19 months for 2,140 cannabis plants
A 34-year-old man was sentenced on 19 July 2018 to 19 months’ imprisonment, convertible to 974 hours of community work, after police raided a former shop in Postojna on 12 April 2018 and seized 2,140 hydroponic cannabis plants and more than 5 kg of dried tops. He was arrested at the Bistrica ob Sotli border crossing on 14 April.
Koper criminal police and Postojna officers searched a former shop in Postojna on
12 April 2018 and found computer-controlled hydroponic rooms on two floors with
2,140 cannabis plants at various stages of growth and more than 5 kg of dried
flowering tops in plastic containers.[1]They removed the growing equipment
and wiring used for irrigation, ventilation and heating.[1]
The suspect, a 34-year-old from the Postojna area, was abroad when the raid
took place; police arrested him on 14 April at the Bistrica ob Sotli border
crossing and a Koper investigating judge ordered house detention.[1]
Sentence
On 19 July 2018 the Koper District Court sentenced him to 19 months in prison,
which he may serve as 974 hours of community work, after he pleaded guilty.[2]The judge followed the prosecution proposal, citing his admission and lack
of prior convictions but also the large seizure and the operation’s duration.[2]Both parties waived appeal, making the judgment final.[2]Criminal
investigators had earlier estimated that a single harvest from the seized plants
could have yielded hundreds of thousands of euros at local retail prices.[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Police estimated potential earnings from one or four harvests in euros; those figures are investigative estimates, not amounts the court found he had earned.
The opened sentencing report gives the offender as 35 at conviction; the April police release described a 34-year-old suspect.
No verified photograph of the April 2018 search was recovered from the opened sources.
Police in Koper detained a 65-year-old man after a drunken public-order incident in which he fell, insulted a passer-by and hit him, and officers seized a small quantity of cannabis from him during the procedure. The Koper Police Administration said a payment order for the violations and a fast-track procedure would follow.
Nova Gorica police searched the home of a 51-year-old British citizen in the municipality of Kanal ob Soči on 3 November and seized eight suspected cannabis plants up to 2.3 metres tall, plus drying stems and dried plant material. Police also fined him for overstaying in the Schengen area and ordered him to leave the country.
Ljubljana District Court ordered pre-trial detention for 13 of the 15 suspects brought before an investigating judge after 41 house searches across Slovenia and 34 arrests in a four-year international drug probe. Two went under house arrest, and in November the court extended detention by two months for most defendants; police seized 51 kilograms of cannabis in Slovenia.
Slovenian police with Europol and 22 forces ended a four-year probe on 6 October 2026, arresting 34 suspects in Slovenia plus two abroad and seizing over three tonnes of cannabis within a multi-drug haul; a Ljubljana court remanded 13 in custody.
