A crime gang who smuggled more than £7 billion of narcotics in the back of trucks filled with rotting vegetables have been jailed.
Eighteen members of the notorious gang funneled more than 50 tonnes of drugs – the weight of around 30 family-sized cars – across the UK from south east England to Scotland over two and a half years.
During a trial at Manchester Crown Court, it heard that ringleader Paul Green, 59, known as ‘The Big Fella’, and his accomplices were said to have gone to ‘extraordinary lengths’ to hide their involvement in the drug trade.
This involved setting up a series of front businesses in the UK and Rotterdam and using stolen IDs and false identities.
They then would hide the drugs in pallets of onions, garlic and ginger as the aromatic vegetables masked the smell of the drugs before shipping them to the UK.
The crime group bought so many onions – between 40 tonnes and 50 tonnes a week – that it couldn’t get rid of them and often sent them back to the continent to act as another cover load.
Green was the point of contact for numerous crime gangs who then paid a fee to ship ship heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis into the UK.
During the trial, the court heard that Green created a fake paper trail to smuggle £1.1m of amphetamine base oil in bottles of cream bought in Belgium.
But the drugs were found by a Border Force dog who sniffed out the drugs hidden in a van in March 2016.
This didn’t stop the gang from continuing their smuggling, the court heard.
John Kinsella, a notorious gang member from Everton, was one of the gang’s customers before he was shot dead by a hitman in 2018 while walking out his dogs.
Prosecutor Andrew Thomas KC said the gang would often continue their illicit activities even after people were arrested and drugs were seized.
‘As soon as one company became exposed, they would switch to another one,’ he said.
He added: ‘The stench of criminality is overpowering.’
When Green was arrested officers found almost £10,000 in cash at his home and his bank statements showed he and his wife spent more than £26,000 on watches and jewellery over the past six months before his arrest.
Between 2016 and 2018 more than £1.5m passed through Green’s bank account. Between 2013 and 2018, he only submitted two tax returns for cleaning and hairdressing businesses.
He declared a profit of £7,405 for 2014-15, and a profit of £17,396 for 2015-16.
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 after he faced financial difficulties and was involved in property and business fraud.
As well as his criminal customers, Green also brought in drugs for his own gang to distribute for sale.
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.’
Two trials were needed to try the defendants, with the first one taking 23 months – the longest in England and Wales’ history – and the second being nine months.
Green, from Widnes, Cheshire, was jailed for 32 years after he was convicted of conspiracy to import drugs and fraud by false representation.
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.
Others sentenced for drugs importation conspiracy charges were fluent Dutch speaker Russell Leonard, 48, of Grosmont Road, Kirkby, Liverpool, who was jailed for 24 years; and Dutch OCG bosses Johannes Vesters, 54, and Barbara Rijnbout, 53, both of Utrecht, who received prison terms of 20 years and 18 years.
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.’
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