Former laird of Gigha jailed for plot to have ex-girlfriend and lover killed

Published on Saturday 11 May 2002 01:00

A FORMER Laird of Gigha who tried to hire a hit man to kill his child’s mother and her lover was yesterday sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison by a court in Australia.

Malcolm Huntley Potier, 50, was convicted in October of trying to arrange the murder of his estranged Scottish partner and her Australian boyfriend.

Failed property tycoon Potier was arrested in Sydney in early 2000 after snatching his two-year-old daughter from her mother.

Potier was found to have entered Australia on a false passport and was sent to a detention centre in Sydney while awaiting a Family Court hearing over custody of his daughter.

In detention, Potier met a man who agreed to kill the child’s mother and her boyfriend. However, when the man was released from detention he took the $Aus12,000 (about 4,475) Potier had paid him for the job and fled to Italy, the court was told.

Potier later made frequent phone calls from the Sydney detention centre to an Australian woman he had befriended, asking her to find him a hit man. The woman contacted police who sent in an undercover agent posing as a hit man to record his conversations with Potier about the attempted killings, the court was told.

Potier pleaded not guilty to the attempted murders. He said he had simply asked his friend to find someone who could dig up evidence showing his former lover’s boyfriend was abusive and a threat to his daughter so that they would not get custody.

In a sentencing in the New South Wales state District Court, Judge Greg Hosking ordered Potier to serve a minimum of five years in prison.