IT’S one of the largest seizures of cannabis ever made in the UK.
Now ten men face lengthy prison sentences after they were convicted of trying to smuggle £36m of the Class C drug into the country through Southampton’s docks.
The news has been hailed as a “massive success” by the country’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) who claim a major supply route into the UK has been disrupted.
The convictions follow a raid on the 26m boat Abbira by customs and border agency officers in April 2008 where they uncovered 12.5 tonnes of the drug. They discovered 419 bales of cannabis resin hidden within the boat's fresh water, ballast and foam tanks.
It was the largest seizure of its kind in recent years – enough to make 36 million spliffs.
Andy Sellers, Deputy Director of SOCA, said: “This operation was a massive success for international and national law enforcement co-operation. The quantity of drugs seized would have resulted in upwards of three-and-a-half million street deals and would have funded a wide range of other criminal activity.
“Taking out both ends of the criminal operation means that not only have we disrupted a supply route into the UK, but also a distribution network that would most likely have stretched right across the UK.”
Winchester Crown Court heard how the crew of the boat had remained in Southampton to collect their wages.
Six were arrested at the Ibis Hotel, where charts of the boat’s journey from Morocco were found. Three others were arrested at Jury’s Inn and the remaining three were arrested at their home addresses in Leicester.
Eight of the 12 men arrested denied the smuggling charges.
But yesterday after almost four days of deliberation, jurors returned majority verdicts of guilty on Serbian nationals Dusan Mileusnic, 49, and Negovan Jovanovic, 58. Two hours earlier Ukraine nationals Yaroslav Ksenovets, 35, and Sergiy Khodos, 26, had been found not guilty.
Israeli nationals Moshe Kedar, 81, and Mordcai Hersh, 67, and Serbian nationals Goram Otovic, 54, and Dragan Stankovic, 54, were convicted last Friday at Winchester Crown Court. Four other men had earlier pleaded guilty.
They were Mohinder Rai, 45, Baljinder Rai, 41, Anjum Nazir, 39, all from Leicester, and Israeli national Yehezkel Srebro, 57.
The prosecution showed that an Israeli organised crime group employed an Eastern European crew to transport the drugs to the UK for delivery to a Leicester-based criminal gang.
The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) co-ordinated the raid on the Abbira which arrived in Southampton on April 3 last year.
The operation, dubbed Caroche, involved work with Hampshire and Leicestershire police, HM Revenue & Customs and overseas law enforcement agencies.
The ten men are due to be sentenced tomorrow.
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