Britain’s ‘biggest smuggling gang’ jailed after importing up to £7 billion-worth of drugs

• ITV Granada Reports journalist Joshua Stokes takes a look back at Britain's longest running drugs trial

A gang which smuggled drugs on an "industrial and unprecedented scale" totalling up to £7 billion and weighing as much as 30 family sized cars have finally been jailed after Britain's longest-running criminal trial.

Eighteen members of the international organised crime group (OCG) have been convicted of importing heroin, cocaine and cannabis to the UK over two-and-a-half years.

The gang, based largely in the North West, covered from the South of England to Scotland, importing drugs from the Netherlands and storing them in warehouses.

The stash would be hidden in strong smelling foods such as onions, garlic and ginger, with offenders using encrypted communications, faked documents and even changing their names by deed poll to import the drugs.

But it was eventually brought down after an innocent lorry driver suspected criminal activity, and called the police, leading the National Crime Agency (NCA) to begin its investigation and uncover the UK’s biggest ever detected drugs conspiracy.

The case was so big, two criminal trials were needed to try the defendants, with one lasting 23 months, a record in England and Wales, and the other nine months.

It can finally be reported after the last three men, all from the North West, were found guilty and reporting restrictions were lifted.

The judge who presided over the trials said the drug smuggling was “on an industrial and hitherto unprecedented scale”.

Manchester Crown Court heard how only six seizures of drugs, with a total street value of £40million, were made from the OCG between August 2015 and September 2018.

But NCA investigators proved there were at least 240 importations, which went to great lengths to confuse the authorities and avoid justice.

Trial judge Paul Lawton said if only half of the importations contained the same quantities of drugs as the six recovered seizures, it would amount to £3billion worth.

Ringleader Paul Green, 59, known as The Big Fella, was the point of contact for numerous OCGs who paid a fee to ship heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis into the UK.

They would set up a series of front companies and warehouses in England and the Netherlands to mask offending using fake and stolen identities.

Green even rented a hotel room near his home in Widnes, Cheshire, so he could use its Wi-Fi without it being traced back to him.

And to avoid detection, the OCG concealed its drugs in consignments of strong-smelling foodstuffs such as onions, garlic and ginger.

The crime group bought so many onions - between 40 tonnes and 50 tonnes a week, that it could not get rid of them and often sent them back to the continent to act as another cover load, the court was told.

Prosecutor Andrew Thomas KC said a feature of the sequence of conspiracies between March 2016 and September 2018 was the “determination to continue the importations even after arrests and/or drug seizures”.

He told jurors: “As soon as one company became exposed, they would switch to another one.”

Among the many items of evidence gathered were messages on Green’s encrypted Encrochat phone, with his handler name of “Duckfarmer”, to accomplices in which he arranged shipments.

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 due to financial difficulties and his self-confessed involvement in property and business fraud.

As well as his OCG customers, Green also brought in drugs for his own gang to distribute for sale.

Sentencing, Judge Paul Lawton told 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.”

What were some of the sentences?

• Paul Green was jailed for 32 years after he was convicted of conspiracy to import drugs and fraud by false representation.

• Steven Martin, 53, of Bolton, Green's “right-hand man”, who organised the finances, was imprisoned for 28 years.

• Muhammad Ovais, 46, of Burnage, Manchester, who was in charge of distributing drugs to OCG customers, was sentenced to 27 years in jail.

• Russell Leonard, 48, of Kirkby, Liverpool, a fluent Dutch speaker, was jailed for 24 years

• Johannes Vesters, 54, and Barbara Rijnbout, 53, both of Utrecht, the Dutch OCG bosses received prison terms of 20 years and 18 years.

• Oliver Penter, 42, of Stockport, who played a hands-on role in the Netherlands and was responsible for hiding drugs in cover loads, sentenced to 24 years

• Alan Cumming, 54, of Bootle, in Liverpool, helped to organised drugs shipments, jailed for 21 years

• Leslie Kewin, 64, of Runcorn, Cheshire, 'odd job man' and gardener who helped arrange front companies and rental premises and opened bank accounts. Changed his name by deed poll to that of his landlord so that he could steal his identity and fraudulently obtained a £214,000 mortgage on his landlord’s house. Died before sentencing.

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.”