Joe Harker
What is believed to be the largest drug smuggling operation in the UK has been busted, with the members jailed for a combined total of 202 years with more sentences yet to be passed down.
The gang smuggled around £7 billion worth of illegal drugs into Britain over a two-and-a-half year period with heroin, cocaine, cannabis and amphetamines chief among their illicit goods.
They used a series of false identities to set up front companies and warehouses in the Netherlands and the UK, hiding the drugs within pallets of produce shipped across the sea and brought to the warehouses by haulage firms, which were unaware of the cargo they were transporting.
The criminals would often hide their drugs in deliveries of onions, garlic and ginger so that the pungent aroma of the produce would cover up the smell of the drugs.
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They imported so much produce that they would have to send much of it back, which then resulted in it being used again for further drug shipments.
Prosecutors said the operations were carried out between March 2016 and September 2018, and were orchestrated by a 59-year-old man named Paul Green, known as 'the big fella'.
Whenever one of their front companies was caught out they'd switch to another one, and while there were only six seizures of drugs, investigators were able to prove that at least 240 shipments took place.
A total of 18 gang members have been convicted, with 11 already sentenced and the rest due to receive their punishments later this month.
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At sentencing, Judge Paul Lawton told the gang members: "Your main purpose was the importation of controlled drugs on an international, and hitherto unprecedented, scale with a value of at least £2 billion and potentially as high as £7 billion.
"The harm caused beyond the importation is incalculable.
"What you were actually distributing was addiction, misery, social degradation and death."
Green was jailed for 32 years, while his 'right hand man' Steven Martin was sentenced to 28 years in prison, and the man in charge of distribution, Muhammad Ovais, received a 27 year sentence.
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Others sentenced include Russell Leonard and Oliver Penter, who both received a 24 year sentence, Dutch gang members Johannes Vesters and Barbara Rijnbout who received 20 years and 18 years in prison respectively, and Alan Cumming (not that one) who will be jailed for 21 years.
Leslie Kewin, who helped organise the front companies, died before sentencing.
Green, who had previously changed his name from Simon Swift to James Russell and then to Paul Green, was the point of contact for several organised criminal groups (OCG) who would pay to ship drugs from the Netherlands to the UK.
He ended up renting a hotel room in Widnes, Cheshire, so he could use the wi-fi there without it being traced back to his home address.
Richard Harrison, regional head of investigations for the National Crime Agency, said: "This was an extremely high-harm OCG that used every tactic possible to evade detection and cheat justice.
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"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."