£60m cocaine yacht smuggler only has £4.07 in his bank account

A drug smuggler caught with £60m worth of cocaine he and a friend were transporting to the UK only has £4.07 in his bank account, a court has heard.Scott Kilgour and Gary Swift were caught with one of the largest cocaine hauls in UK history when Border Force officers swooped on their yacht off the Pembrokeshire coast.

The pair had sailed from South America to Welsh waters with more than 750kg of high-purity cocaine hidden in "every available storage space" in the boat - even the fridge.

But their activities had been under surveillance from law enforcement agencies for weeks.

Kilgour had previously been jailed for 13-and-a-half years and Swift for 19-and-a-half years for their roles in the smuggling operation when the case of Kilgour came back to Swansea Crown Court for a proceeds of crime hearing.

Tim Evans, prosecuting, said following a financial investigation the only assets of Kilgour's that could be found was a bank account containing £4.07.

The court ordered a confiscation order in that amount.The barrister added that Kilgour, of Bedford Close, Huyton, Liverpool, should understand that were he to come into significant sums of money in the future, the prosecution could return to court and seek further confiscation orders.A similar financial investigation into fellow Liverpudlian cocaine courier Swift, of no fixed abode, had previously identified that he held assets to the value of £328,071 including three boats, five caravans at various sites in the north of England, a Hymer mobile home, and a personalised registration number JAS5. These assets are in the process of being sold by the National Crime Agency.

Kilgour and Swift were arrested shortly before 3am on August 27, 2019, when Border Force officers intercepted a yacht called the Atrevido near St Bride's Bay in Pembrokeshire.The boat was towed to Fishguard harbour and searched, with officers uncovering a total of 751 one-kilo packages of high-purity cocaine hidden in "every available storage space" in the vessel.The pair had sailed the boat from Spain to Suriname - a country described in court as "an established transport hub" for exporting wholesale quantities of Class A drugs - in the June of that year to collect their cargo before returning back across the Atlantic on their couriering cruise.

The wholesale value of the Class A haul found on the boat was put at around £24m, with a street value of perhaps £60m.