Driver claimed he drank half a bottle of whisky after crash

But Alexandru Borodin, 36, of Allez Street, St Peter Port, failed to mention it to officers at the scene.

The Magistrate’s Court was told how the defendant had crashed his Audi saloon into a wall near the travel agents at Mont d’Aval, Castel, at about 12.30am on Sunday 5 May. The road was closed for hours but nobody was seriously hurt, despite one man reportedly being thrown from the vehicle.

Vehicle parts were strewn everywhere and police arrived to find multiple people at the scene which Judge Gary described as one of ‘total devastation’.

Borodin, who denied a charge of drink-driving, told officers he had drunk two or three beers. He failed a roadside breath test and was arrested. An evidential one at the Police Station two hours later identified 74mcg of alcohol in 100ml of his breath – twice the legal limit.

In interview about 12 hours later, he mentioned drinking whisky at the scene but said he could not say how much. A search of the car failed to find any bottle. People on the scene before the police arrived, including the owners of the wall which was destroyed and Borodin’s friends who were passengers in the car could recall seeing anyone drinking whisky, though Borodin did have a receipt for the purchase of a bottle of whisky from the previous day in his pocket.

He told the court that he had been swerving to avoid another car when the crash happened. He had not mentioned the whisky to police at the scene as he thought they were only asking him about what he had had to drink before the accident, and he had been nervous.

An expert who produced a report for the defence concluded that based on what the defendant had told him, Borodin would have been under the drink-drive limit at the time of the collision.

Judge Perry said the case all came down to witness credibility. He was in no doubt that the defendant had been lying when giving evidence but like all the best lies, they were based on truth, which was why the numbers matched as far as the expert calculations went. The defendant might have had three beers before the collision occurred but he was satisfied he had drunk the whisky before it too.

He found the claim that the whisky bottle would have been on the back seat of the car and intact at the scene ‘incredible’ given the total devastation there.

This was one of the more serious cases of its type that he was being asked to deal with, he said.

The drink-drive offence was substantially aggravated by the standard of his driving and the fact that three or four other people were in the car at the time. Borodin, who had no previous convictions, was fined £1,200 and banned from driving for three-and-a-half years.