Brit drug smuggler who attempted £100m cocaine haul still on the run after 30 years
A drug smuggler thought he had cracked the perfect plan to flood Scotland with Colombian cocaine over three decades ago - but his grand scheme unravelled spectacularly, leading to the biggest cocaine bust in UK history, and his mysterious disappearance.
A new three-part documentary primarily in Gaelic with English subtitles on BBC Alba, entitled Cocain is na Klondykers (or Cocaine and the Klondykers in English), is set to explore Operation Klondyke, the surveillance operation that brought Julian Chisholm's plan down.
Julian Chisholm's cocaine-smuggling master plan
Julian Chisholm, originally from Blairgowrie, Perthshire, worked as a deep-sea diver in the North Sea oil industry during the 1980s before swapping life on the rigs for the high-stakes world of international drug smuggling.
Chisholm convinced the infamous Columbian Cali Cartel, one of the world's most dangerous crime syndicates, that he could bypass traditional European trafficking routes and smuggle high-purity cocaine directly into Scotland. His plan? Bring it in via the remote Scottish Highlands, a region so vast and sparsely populated that authorities would struggle to monitor every possible entry point.
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Journalist Eugene Costello, who has investigated Chisholm’s operation, said: "Setting up a deal like that with the Cali Cartel doesn’t happen overnight. I’m still intrigued how he did it."
To prove he was up to the task, Chisholm first smuggled a large quantity of cannabis onto Gruinard Island, a place so contaminated by anthrax from WWII experiments that few dare set foot on it to this day.
"Half a tonne of gold was worth £7 or £8 million," writer Iain F Macleod told BBC Alba. "Half a tonne of cocaine was worth £100 million."
How it all went wrong
In December 1990, Chisholm’s team, consisting of divers, fishermen, and smugglers, set sail on a rusty freighter to collect bales of cocaine dropped into the Atlantic off the coast of Trinidad. After a dangerous journey, they finally reached Scotland’s rugged north-west coast in the middle of a brutal storm.
"It was foolhardy almost to the point of homicidal to cut them adrift in a force 10 storm," Costello said.
Packets of cocaine were lost overboard, and the team stashed what was left of the drugs under rocks before alerting Chisholm of their arrival.
The Dundee-based distribution crew then hired a bright orange van to transport the drugs south. Their cover story was that were supposedly transporting radioactive material from Dounreay nuclear plant. They even had fake paperwork to back it up.
But authorities were already on high alert.
Customs investigator Graham Dick recalled: "We were always thinking this was going to be a cannabis importation and when the van was opened we had these black bags.
"The total was half a tonne of cocaine."
At the time, the bust was Britain’s largest ever cocaine seizure, worth a staggering £100 million. Chisholm’s gang was swiftly arrested and jailed. But Chisholm himself had one last trick up his sleeve.
The great escape
Chisholm was arrested in Spain and held in Fontcalent high-security prison while awaiting extradition. Fellow inmate and former smuggler Chet Sandhu described it as 'a notorious jail' and 'not a pleasant place to be in'.
But Chisholm didn’t stick around. On the day of his transfer to another facility, guards escorted him outside, where he and another prisoner slipped out of their manacles and ran into the desert.
Where is Chisholm now?
Decades later, Chisholm, who is also referred to as 'Mr. X', remains one of the UK’s most wanted men. Forensic artist Hew Morrison has now created an aged-up image of what he might look like today, as per the Press and Journal.
“Last year there was an Italian mafia member who had been on the run for the same amount of time as Chisholm and he was apprehended", Morrison told the outlet. “We are hoping that this image may lead to Chisholm being captured as well.”
Former crime investigator Graeme Pearson agrees that the authorities aren’t giving up anytime soon: "It’s not within the DNA of law enforcement to let anything go so if the slightest bit of information comes in that reveals he is alive, you can bet they will be on top of that and will want to arrest him."
The hunt for Chisholm continues, and with renewed attention on his case, it’s possible that one of Scotland’s most elusive fugitives might finally be brought to justice.
The first episode of Cocain is na Klondykers is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer.
Topics: BBC, Drugs, News, Podcast, UK News, Crime, Documentaries
Lucy Sarret