Britain’s greatest ever medication gang dropped at justice: Criminal community which smuggled ‘£3BILLION’ of cocaine, heroin and hashish into UK hidden in crates of smelly onions are jailed for greater than 200 years

A ruthless gang who hid heroin, cocaine and cannabis worth billions in cargoes of strong-smelling onion and garlic have today been exposed as the UK’s biggest ever drug smuggling ring.

Eleven members of an organised crime group headed by 59-year-old Paul Green, from Widnes, Cheshire, have been given sentences totalling more than 200 years following the country’s longest-running criminal trial ever, it can now be revealed.

Their convictions can now be reported after three more members of the gang were convicted following a second trial.

The judge who presided over both said the smuggling was ‘on an industrial and hitherto unprecedented scale’ as they caused ‘incalculable’ harm by flooding the country with illegal drugs.

Judge Paul Lawton said that if only half of the importations contained the same quantities as the six recovered seizures, the total amount they brought in would amount to £3billion worth.

More than 50 tonnes of drugs – the weight of around 30 family cars – are suspected to have been smuggled in before being sold to street gangs from south east England to Scotland.

To avoid detection, the gang 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 couldn’t get rid of them, with environmental health officers investigating complaints about piles of smelly rotten vegetables.

Eventually they began sending the pungent produce back to the continent to act as another cover load.

‘The stench of criminality is overpowering,’ prosecuting KC Andrew Thomas told the jury as has he opened the case.

Six seizures of drugs with a total street value of £40million were made from the gang – based in north west England with accomplices in the Netherlands – between August 2015 and September 2018.

But investigators from the National Crime Agency – dubbed Britain’s FBI – proved there were at least 240 importations as they went to great lengths to confuse the authorities and avoid justice.

Ringleader Green – who was jailed for 32 years – used sophisticated methods to evade detection, including cloned companies and identity theft – as well as brutal threats of violence.

When a foot soldier went out drinking all night in Amsterdam and left a van containing £1million worth of amphetamine unguarded, he warned one that if the stash had been stolen ‘there’ll be f***ing murders’.

In just six months, he and his wife spent more than £26,000 on watches and jewellery.

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

Offenders used encrypted communications, faked documents, changed their names by deed poll and acquired live and defunct – but previously legitimate – businesses to disguise their drugs importations.

Suppliers and transport firms would be far less suspicious about doing business with an organisation appearing to have an established trading history and, in some cases, an existing VAT number.

Earlier Green created a fake paper trail to smuggle £1.1million of amphetamine base oil in bottles of cream bought in Belgium.

But a Border Force dog sniffed out the drugs hidden in a van in March 2016.

Undeterred, the gang used a front company cloned from a legitimate business in Truro, Cornwall, to try and smuggle 8kgs of cocaine worth nearly £1m into the UK.

They rented a warehouse in the Netherlands, and hid the cocaine in four cardboard boxes packed with ginger for deliveries to be made to warehouses they had rented in Bolton, Wigan and Ormskirk.

The plot was foiled when an innocent Dutch haulage driver employed to collect and deliver the consignment became suspicious and returned to his depot.

Police were called and eight 1kg bricks of cocaine found hidden in the load.

Each had different markings to denote the various crime gangs they were destined for.

Just a month later, Green’s gang was trying to smuggle 57kg of amphetamine, worth about £1.1m, from the Netherlands to the UK.

But Dutch officers had group members under surveillance and were listening to their phone calls.

Russell Leonard, 47, a foot soldier who spoke fluent Dutch, and a man who cannot be named for legal reasons had the drugs in a van and were responsible for its safe keeping en route to the UK.

But Leonard, of Kirkby, Merseyside, who was usually responsible for packing the group’s drugs in the Netherlands, and his accomplice went out drinking all night and left the van unguarded in Amstelveen, a southern suburb of Amsterdam.

In a recorded conversation, Green told one of them: ‘If the van’s gone or been grabbed by the police then there’ll be f***ing murders.’

When the duo returned the following morning from their drinking session, they got in the van and drove off – but were immediately stopped by Dutch police.

Leonard was jailed for 24 years.

In 2017 the OCG recruited Sohail Qureshi, 64, Khaleed Vazeer, 58, and Ghazanfar Mahmood, 53, to develop a new transport route into the UK.

They joined forces with a Dutch criminal group led by Barbara Rijnbout, 53, and Johannes Vesters, 54, who were jailed for 18 years and 20 years respectively after being extradited from the Netherlands.

In 2018, after the NCA and Dutch Police began working together, the vast scale of the gang’s offending became clearer.

Joint working led to the seizure of 450kg of cocaine and heroin and two tonnes of cannabis across three seizures at the ports of Killingholme and Immingham, both Lincolnshire, and one in the Netherlands.

Green and accomplice Leslie Kewin, 63, of Runcorn, Cheshire, also stole a man’s identity and raised a £262,000 mortgage on the victim’s four-bedroom house in Waverton, near Chester, to pay for a drugs debt.

Instructed by Green, Kewin rented the property and changed his name by deed poll to the same as the landlord.

Kewin then claimed he owned the house and obtained the fraudulent mortgage, provided by a small finance company.

The gang used the landlord’s name to open bank accounts, create a company called Blackpool Fruit and Veg and rent a warehouse in Leeds.

When Green was arrested officers recovered almost £10,000 in cash from his home.

His bank statements showed he and his wife spent more than £26,000 on watches and jewellery in the previous six months.

Between 2016 and 2018 more than £1.5m passed through their bank accounts.

Between 2013 and 2018, Green only submitted two tax returns for cleaning and hairdressing businesses.

He had no previous convictions but had changed his name twice by deed poll – from Simon Swift to James Russell, and then to Paul Green – due to financial difficulties and his self-confessed involvement in property and business fraud.

Crucial evidence was uncovered in the form of messages on his encrypted Encrochat phone, on which his handle was ‘Duckfarmer’.

Regional drug gangs paid a fee for consignments to be hidden in pallets of fresh produce at the Dutch end.

These would then be unwittingly shipped to the UK by innocent transport firms before being unloaded at warehouses rented for the purpose and then distributed.

Jurors were told that the cargoes intercepted by police represented the tip of an ‘extremely large iceberg’.

Customers included Merseyside mob enforcer John Kinsella, 53, who was shot dead by a hitman in May 2018 as he walked his dogs with his pregnant partner.

Judge Paul Lawton told the offenders: ‘It was only the dedication, persistence and professionalism of the National Crime Agency working in conjunction with their Dutch counterparts that the scale and complexity of your operation was unmasked.’

He told the gang members: ‘The harm caused beyond the importation is incalculable.

‘What you were actually distributing was addiction, misery, social degradation and in some cases death.

‘All of that was foreseeable and known by you. You were also facilitating serious organised crime on a national scale and the violence that forms an inherent part of that culture.’

Today Rob Jones, NCA Director General of Operations, said: ‘Without criminals like these, there would be no young teenagers dealing drugs through County Lines.

‘There would be no turf war murders or innocent members of the public killed in the crossfire.

‘Paul Green and his accomplices enabled and helped deliver this kind of suffering and misery in communities across the country. They were the crucial link in moving drugs from source countries abroad all the way to UK towns and cities where lives were wrecked by them.

‘They thought they could hide behind a web of front companies, false personas and encrypted communications. They were wrong.

‘NCA investigators worked tirelessly to identify this international organised crime group involved in industrial scale drug trafficking.

‘Our officers’ meticulous work unmasked them and evidenced the scale of harm they were causing to UK communities.

‘The team brought together multiple sources of evidence from overseas partners, seizures at ports and analysis of travel which has dismantled a group operating at the highest levels of organised crime.’

Minister for Crime and Policing, Dame Diana Johnson said: ‘This was an extremely complex operation involving a huge number of agencies working together. My thanks go to every single officer who helped to bring these criminals to justice.

‘We are determined to bring these organised drug gangs to justice and our streets will be safer with these criminals no longer free to prey on vulnerable people in the name of profit.’

Sara Drysdale, Specialist Prosecutor from the Crown Prosecution Service, said: ‘This case is believed to involve the largest ever drug smuggling operation ever detected in the UK.

‘The scale of the importations was immense and the total value of the drugs was worth up to an estimated £7 billion.

‘The defendants convicted in this case include several of the higher-level organisers who financed and organised the drug shipments and who went to extraordinary and complex lengths to disguise their involvement.

‘The series of conspiracies to import drugs into the UK culminated in an alliance between UK and Dutch Organised Crime Gangs to import drugs predominantly on behalf of numerous others. This was a highly organised operation bringing three to four shipments of drugs a week and involving hundreds of kilos of drugs.

‘We would like to thank the comprehensive investigation work of the National Crime Agency. They provided the evidence needed to build a prosecution case which enabled us to seek justice against these 18 convicted defendants. We also extend our thanks to the Dutch investigating authorities for their assistance in the provision of key evidence.

‘We will be pursuing confiscation proceedings against defendants convicted in this case to recover money and assets they gained from their criminality.’

One trial lasted 23 months, a record in England and Wales – the other lasted nine months.

Today, at Manchester Crown Court, reporting restrictions were lifted upon verdicts in the second trial.

Out of 18 members of the gang to be convicted, 11 have been jailed for a total of 202 years, with a further six due to be sentenced later this month.

One – Kewin – died while awaiting sentence.