Britain’s ‘biggest drug smuggling gang’ jailed
A gang which smuggled up to £7 billion worth of drugs from the continent over two-a-half years have been jailed.
It is believed to be the largest drug smuggling operation ever detected in the UK, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Ringleader Paul Green, 59, known as The Big Fella, was the point of contact for numerous organised criminal groups (OCGs) who paid a fee to ship heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis into the UK.
Drugs would be hidden within pallets of fresh produce at the Dutch end of the enterprise and then shipped into the UK by innocent haulage firms before the criminals would remove the drugs for distribution to their fee-paying customers as part of the “transport service”.
Onions, garlic or ginger were often the produce of choice as they helped conceal any smell of drugs.
Prosecutor Andrew Thomas KC said a feature of the sequence of conspiracies between March 2016 and September 2018 was the “determination to continue the importations even after arrests and/or drug seizures”.
He told jurors: “As soon as one company became exposed, they would switch to another one.”
Only six seizures of drugs were made but National Crime Agency (NCA) investigators were able to prove at least 240 consignments took place with up to four shipments per week.
Green, 59, had no previous convictions but had changed his name twice by deed poll from Simon Swift to James Russell and then to Green due to financial difficulties and his self-confessed involvement in property and business fraud.
As well as his OCG customers, Green also brought in drugs for his own gang to distribute for sale.
“The harm caused beyond the importation is incalculable.
“What you were actually distributing was addiction, misery, social degradation and death.”
The defendants were separated into two trials with reporting restrictions lifted following the conclusion of the second trial which lasted nine months.
The first trial involving Green lasted 23 months as jurors took 141 hours to reach their verdicts.
His “right-hand man”, Steven Martin, 53, of Chorley Old Road, Bolton, Greater Manchester, who organised the finances, was imprisoned for 28 years, while another key member, Muhammad Ovais, 46, of Bournelea Avenue, Burnage, Manchester, who was in charge of distributing drugs to OCG customers, was sentenced to 27 years in jail.
Richard Harrison, NCA regional head of investigations, said: “This was an extremely high-harm OCG that used every tactic possible to evade detection and cheat justice.
“The offenders smuggled huge quantities of drugs into the UK. They had absolutely no ethics. They stooped incredibly low and left a trail of devastation for entirely innocent people by cloning businesses and stealing identities.
“NCA officers and Dutch partners were tenacious and left no stone unturned in this investigation.”