Ben Currie’s lawyers argue for fines

Trainer Ben Currie’s legal team will argue for fines for his guilty findings on several charges.

Lawyers for Ben Currie are likely to argue precedent cases indicate a fine would be within sentencing range for the trainer’s latest convictions.

Currie is unlikely to be sentenced for at least a week after stewards found him guilty on 12 charges of race day treatments.

Submissions on his sentence were to be finalised on Friday but have now been extended by a week.

Currie’s barrister Jim Murdoch said Currie’s lawyers had been examining wide-ranging sentence precedents for similar cases.

“I obviously can’t comment any further but can confirm some of those cases have involved fines and in some cases relatively small fines,” he said.

Last month Currie was disqualified for four years after stewards found text messages he sent indicated an intention to use a jigger.

He was then found guilty of five race-day treatment charges from March 2018 as well as a further seven race-day treatment charges from a Toowoomba meeting in April last year.

Currie has been unable to train since Racing Queensland earlier this month invoked a rule which allows them to refuse his nominations for races.

A large number of horses have been transferred from his stables but his father Mark Currie was partly successful in an appeal against his sentence and has been able to train some of them.

Ben Currie lost a Supreme Court injunction application against RQ and then withdrew an application for a stay on his disqualification.

He will continue on with internal review applications for both the disqualification charges and the latest convictions.