Five drug smugglers who posed as wholesale grocers to import £200 million of cocaine into the UK hidden inside a shipment of bananas have been jailed for more than 100 years.
Border Force agents seized 2.3 tonnes of the drug when it arrived at Portsmouth harbour from Colombia in February 2021.
They switched the narcotics for more bananas and sent two undercover officers posing as lorry drivers to deliver the haul to a bogus grocery warehouse the gang had set up in Enfield, north London.
Shortly after, armed police burst in and arrested four of the gang. They also recovered a loaded revolver hidden on a roof beam and the electronic key flat to a flat in Islington.
The flat was empty and it was obvious no-one was staying there, the Old Bailey heard.
But under the kitchen cabinets police found another 33 kilo blocks of cocaine from a previous shipment worth another £1.24 million wholesale and with a street value of at least £2 million.
Crime boss Petko Zhutev was in charge of taking delivery of the Colombian drugs at the warehouse.
Midway through a retrial, Zhutev, 39, who entered the UK from Bulgaria in January 2021, admitted importation of a class A drug having previously been cleared of possession of a revolver and ammunition with intent to endanger life.
On Tuesday, he was jailed for 27 years alongside four others, after Judge Rebecca Trowler KC said he played a ‘leading role’ in the importation.
The judge said Zhutev had committed previous offences, including making a fraudulent application for a Covid bounce back loan to a company in his name.
Erik Muci, 45, of Hornchurch, and Olsi Ebeja, 40, of Islington, were found guilty of importation at the conclusion of the retrial and were sentenced to 33 years’ and 17 years’ imprisonment respectively.
Muci, described by a judge as a ‘key organiser’, was jailed for 26 years for the importation and given a further consecutive sentence of seven years’ imprisonment for the supply of class A drugs, after police recovered 33kg of cocaine from a property on Caledonian Road, north London.
Judge Trowler said Muci, who had worked as a plumber since arriving in the UK as a refugee from Albania, was ‘organising the buying and selling of cocaine on a commercial scale’.
She said Ebeja, who was born in Kosovo and had worked as a waiter and a minicab driver since arriving in the UK in 1999, carried out an ‘operational function’ in the enterprise, including as a driver.
Bruno Kuci, 32, who was born in Albania and came to the UK in December 2020, and Gjergji Diko, 34, of west Beckton, who were arrested with Zhutev, had previously pleaded guilty to the importation charges.
Kuci, described as a ‘trusted member of the operation’, was jailed for 21 years and Diko, who also moved to the UK from Albania and had worked as a mechanic, for 18 years.
Sentencing them on Tuesday, Judge Trowler said the importation was ‘plainly the work of an organised crime group with international elements’, adding the group had Bulgarian and Albanian elements.
She added: ‘The extremely large quantities of cocaine involved and the organisation required to bring such amounts into the UK from Colombia demonstrated beyond doubt that this enterprise was sophisticated in its planning and well resourced.’
Jurors were told the cocaine had a potential street value of at least £186 million, rising to £200 million when mixed with other substances, at the time making it the largest inland seizure ever by UK officers.
Judge Trowler said the ‘sophisticated’ operation included specialist laminated glass being installed at the warehouse to limit visibility, as well as the use of hi-vis jackets to give the impression of a legitimate operation and Dutch sim phones to avoid detection.
Orange stickers were also used by the smugglers to identify the correct banana boxes.
The NCA said the drugs had different branded stamps on them, which corresponded to particular organised crime groups planning to sell them on the streets of London and the wider UK.
It added that officers also found nine empty suitcases which were to be filled with cash generated from drugs sales.
John Coles, head of specialist operations at the NCA, said the sentences represented the ‘culmination of a thorough investigation’.
He added: ‘By intercepting this huge haul of cocaine, which was one of the largest ever of its kind in the UK, we stopped it from reaching UK communities and protected the public from the scourge of class A drugs and street violence associated with it.’
Gemma Burns, a senior crown prosecutor at the CPS, said investigators ‘foiled the gang’s banana box scheme’ and stopped ‘dangerous drugs from reaching our streets’.
Ms Burns added: ‘A banana import business was used as a front to smuggle well over two thousand kilograms of cocaine into the UK; representing international drug trafficking on an industrial scale.
‘The significant sentences given to the gang mean they will be off our streets for a long time.
‘These sentences send a clear message to criminals intent on trying to flood the UK with drugs that we will not rest until you are convicted and behind bars.’
The CPS said it will now commence confiscation proceedings to reclaim the proceeds of the crimes.
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