Spiritual leader 'cleansing air', not fertilising dope

Daily Telegraph, Australia/July 25, 2007
By Angela Kamper

Kabbalah sect leader Gilla Mogilevsky claims she was "cleansing" the air - not spraying her son's million-dollar cannabis on Sydney's North Shore.

But a magistrate yesterday begged to differ, ordering her to trial for her alleged part in cultivating and supplying the illicit drug.

Police surveillance in June last year captured Mogilevsky, 53, spraying what police allege was pesticide or herbicide near a crop of 494 plants on a North Shore property.

She was also filmed using an industrial vacuum cleaner to collect fallen debris.

"On the defendant's conduct as videotaped ... quite comfortably the jury could infer that she, of course, was acting in concert with her sons to cultivate cannabis," Magistrate Jayeann Carney told Central Local Court yesterday.

Mogilevsky's barrister Wayne Baffsky blamed her sons for implicating her in the cultivation of a $2 million hydroponic cannabis crop.

He told the court she was cleansing the area as part of her practice as a pranic healer after discovering what her sons were up to.

Her three sons, Aitan, 25, Roni, 23, and Uri, 27, are on parole after serving more than 11 months behind bars for cannabis cultivation.

In earlier evidence, Aitan Mogilevsky, 25, said he and his brother had tried to keep the crop a secret.

He said when their mother found out, they fought about it and she threatened to move out if they didn't clean up their act.

He told the court he'd seen his mother spray the air or do similar things before as part of her practice as a "pranic healer".

"She was spraying to ... energetically cleanse the air, the area, the person, that sort of thing," he said.

Mr Baffsky conceded Mogilevsky's behaviour was "suspicious".

In July last year police swooped on three properties in Cowan Rd and Killeaton St, St Ives, where police allege they found 1000 potted marijuana plants growing under lights.

That was a week before Mogilevsky appeared in the June 26, 2006 edition of Woman's Day saying Kabbalah, a movement made famous by Madonna, had saved her from the 2002 Bali bombings and a plane crash.

She was committed to trial in the District Court on August 3.