The criminal cousin of chart-topping Grammy-winning pop star ‘Estelle’ dodged a return to prison today (Thursday) when sentenced for having £350 worth of party-drugs cocaine and ecstasy on him when stopped by armed police.
Jude Lebaga, 30, was originally charged with dealing after officers searched his former Barking home – seizing more cocaine and ecstasy, plus a set of scales – but those allegations were dropped.
Lebaga, of 63 Bicknoller Road, Enfield, who grew up with Hammersmith-born Estelle Fanta Swaray, 29, (pictured) who had a No. 1 hit with American Boy pleaded guilty to possessing the drugs in Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith on January 23, last year.
The prosecution dropped charges of intending to supply those drugs plus possessing further quantities of cocaine and ecstasy at 72 Chelmer Crescent, Barking, with intent to supply.
He was sentenced at Kingston Crown Court to an eighteen-month community order and was ordered to perform 150 hours unpaid community service work.
His arrest was a major embarrassment for the star who months earlier spearheaded the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Trident “Respect. You Don’t Need A Gun To Get It,” anti-black on black crime drive.
In fact it was reportedly Operation Trident officers who stopped Lebaga, who has criminal convictions and was once sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
An order was made for forfeiture and destruction of the drugs.
Estelle wrote the song 1980 about being raised in the same four-bed house as her cousins, uncles and aunts and brothers.
Some members were “in and out of prison daily,” she said.
Her Senegalese mother and Lebaga’s mother are sisters.
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