Drugs boss of a £60 million cocaine supply ring in west London jailed for 17 years

  • London
Jailed: Klodjan Copja. Credit: Met Police

A drugs boss of a £60 million cocaine supply ring in west London has been jailed for 17 years.

Klodjan Copja, 30, an Albanian national of no fixed abode, was sentenced at Kingston Crown Court after he pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs, one count of conspiracy to supply Class B drugs and one count of conspiracy to import a Class A drug.

The court heard Copja was caught as the result of a Met Police into a UK cocaine supply network from April 2013 to July 2015.

During the first period, from April 2013 to July 2013, Met officers worked with colleagues from Kent Police, West Midlands Police, Bedfordshire Police and Thames Valley Police to carry out a surveillance operation on Copja’s drug supply network.

As a result, 12 people were arrested for their involvement as customers or suppliers of Class A drugs, worth an estimated £2.5 million.

They received a combined total of 166 years in prison.

In July 2013, Met officers detained Copja's couriers in possession of 11kg of cocaine, 6.5kg heroin and 3kg cannabis in the Earls Court area of London.

During their arrests, Copja was seen to drive past the safe house before fleeing the UK later the same day.

Copja returned to the UK in March 2014 and the investigation into his network continued.

Between March 2014 and July 2014, police identified that Copja had employed a new network of couriers.

One of the couriers was identified as making weekly trips to a lay-by in Maidstone, Kent where he would meet a lorry that had imported cocaine from the continent into the UK.

Once the drugs were in the UK, the courier would supply them to numerous organised crime groups in London, Birmingham, Leicester and Nottingham.

Copja again fled the United Kingdom and his network closed down.

Investigations revealed the network had imported approximately 540kg of cocaine, worth an estimated £23 million, into the UK prior to their detention.

Copja returned to the UK in October 2014 and again rebuilt his cocaine distribution network.

Phone evidence implicated Copja as orchestrating this network from overseas.

Upon hearing his accomplices had been detained, he remained on the run until March 2017, when he was detained in Greece and then extradited back to the UK.

  • Klodjan Copja was sentenced at Kingston Crown Court on August 4.