A District Court trial has found a former top executive guilty of raping a Norwegian backpacker in Far North Queensland.
Alan George Vico was a senior executive of Ports North — a Queensland government-owned corporation — when he picked up the young woman as she walked along a road, took her to a motel in the Cairns suburb of Earlville and raped her in September 2018.
The engineering student, who was heavily intoxicated after an evening with friends in a Cairns nightclub, woke naked the next morning in the room, where she found a $20 note and a condom wrapper on the table beside her.
Vico had argued during the week-long trial before Judge Michael Rackemann that the sex was consensual.
But the jury found Vico guilty after eight hours of deliberation.
He was sentenced to five years behind bars.
Vico sighed loudly on hearing the verdict and turned to his family, who were seated in the public gallery throughout most of the eight-day trial.
Prosecutor Claudia Georgouras told the court Vico had "shown no remorse" or "any insight into his offending".
Earlier this week, she had detailed how the woman had been drinking heavily with friends before heading to The Woolshed nightclub in Cairns at 9:30pm, and was later asked to leave by security guards due to her level of intoxication.
The university exchange student had an estimated blood alcohol content of 0.229 when she left the nightclub about 10:22pm.
Ms Georgouras had argued throughout the trial that the woman did "not have the cognisant ability to give consent".
"She didn't know what city she was in," Ms Georgouras said.
"She didn't know where her friends were, she couldn't have an intelligible conversation."
Defence barrister Harvey Walters had argued his client "honestly and reasonably believed she was consenting" to sex.
He said his client used his full name, credit card and home address when checking in to the motel room because he "didn't have anything to hide".
He also told the jury that Mr Vico could have "got out of the car and taken her into the dark if he wanted to rape her".
"He could take her to a remote beach," Mr Walters said.
Vico was sentenced to five years in jail and will be eligible for parole in 2024.
