Billion dollar smuggling with onions, garlic and ginger
Dutch members of largest British drug organisation behind bars for long: 'Only causes death and misery'
Marcel Vink

02 Dec 202 4in Domestic

MANCHESTER - Two Dutch who were part of one of the largest drug gangs the United Kingdom has ever known, have been given heavy prison sentences. Our compatriots Johannes V. and Barbara R. from Utrecht will disappear behind British bars for 20 and 18 years.

The court in Manchester ruled on Monday. The gang that may have smuggled £7 billion worth of drugs from mainland Europe over two and a half years has been dismantled after a lengthy investigation, according to British justice.

The prosecutor spoke of probably 'the biggest drug smuggling network' ever discovered in the United Kingdom. Drug boss Paul Green (59), who was nicknamed The Big Fella, was the point of contact for numerous organised crime groups who paid the gang to send heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis to the United Kingdom.

Green and his accomplices went to great lengths to conceal their involvement as they set up a series of companies and warehouses in the Netherlands and the North of England, using false and stolen identities.

Vegetables as a cover
The drugs were hidden in pallets of fresh produce that were sent from our country to the United Kingdom by innocent transport companies. Criminals removed the narcotics after arrival in order to distribute them further in the country. Often it was the import of onions, garlic or ginger because they helped to hide the smell of drugs.

Prosecutor Andrew Thomas said a hallmark of the smuggling gang – active between March 2016 and September 2018 – was its determination to continue importing even after arrests and/or seizures of drug shipments. “As soon as one company was exposed, they would move on to another.”

Only six narcotics seizures were made, but investigators from the National Crime Agency (NCA) were able to prove that at least 240 shipments took place, with up to four shipments a week. Among the wealth of evidence collected were messages on Green's encrypted Encrochat phone, using his handler name 'Duckfarmer', to accomplices in which he arranged the shipments.

Dutch suspects
Johannes V. (54) from Utrecht was also convicted, as was Barbara R. (53). She is also originally from Utrecht, but last lived in IJsselstein. They were seen as the Dutch bosses and were sentenced to 20 and 18 years in prison respectively.

The gang members were given a good beating by Judge Paul Lawton. "Your main purpose was the importation of drugs on an international, and hitherto unprecedented, scale worth at least £2 billion and possibly as much as £7 billion." That is the equivalent of between €2.4 and €8.4 billion. "The damage caused beyond the importation is immeasurable. What you really brought was addiction, misery and death."

Also convicted was Russel L. from Kirkby, Liverpool, who speaks fluent Dutch. He was sentenced to almost a quarter of a century in prison.

'Cheaters'
Richard Harrison, NCA Regional Head of Investigations, added during the hearing: “Every tactic possible was used to evade detection and deceive justice. The perpetrators smuggled vast quantities of drugs into the UK. They had absolutely no ethics and left a trail of destruction for completely innocent people, cloning companies and stealing identities. Fortunately, the NCA officers and their Dutch partners were tenacious and left no stone unturned in this investigation.”