Cocaine smugglers jump off boat holding £39m drug haul

  • Footage of the escape was filmed by Border Force officials

Two drug smugglers who hid 350kgs of cocaine worth £39m in the hull of a boat tried to shake off pursuing Border Force officials by jumping into the sea.

Bruce Knowles, 55, from Dereham and Ferhat Gumrukguoglu, 31, from the Netherlands, were travelling in a RHIB speedboat just offshore from East Benacre Broads in Suffolk, when they were approached by the Border Force after officers noticed them acting suspiciously.

The video shows the moment Gumrukguoglu dived off the moving vessel and swam toward the beach to avoid arrest.

Following a short chase, the boat was stopped in the shallow water and officers moved in to arrest Knowles, but he also jumped overboard in a bid to escape.

Border Force officers were able to catch up with and arrest Knowles, while Norfolk and Suffolk police pursued Gumrukguoglu after he fled from the beach, arresting him later that day in Wrentham - a village two miles inland.

The boat was towed to a harbour in Lowestoft where it was searched by National Crime Agency officers, who found the haul of drugs hidden under tarpaulin.

Knowles (left) and Gumrukguoglu (right) were intercepted by Border Force on 24 June. Credit: National Crime Agency.

Investigators believe Knowles and Gumrukguoglu travelled towards French waters to pick up the drugs from a larger ship, before bringing them back to the UK.

Both men were interviewed and gave no comment, but were subsequently charged with importing a controlled drug.

They pleaded guilty to the offence at Ipswich Crown Court on Tuesday.

NCA branch commander Lydia Bloomfield said: “Knowles and Gumrukguoglu knew they were going to lose a huge quantity of drugs when they were intercepted at sea by our Border Force colleagues.

“Both were working for a wider organised crime group, who will now feel the effects of a loss of this amount.

“Thanks to the work of our Border Force and Joint Maritime Security Centre partners, a very significant amount of class A drugs have been removed from the criminal marketplace where they would have fuelled further criminality and exploitation."

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