Paul Green, known as 'The Big Fella', was sentenced to 32 years for smuggling up to £7 billion worth of drugs hidden in fruit and vegetables. His operation involved heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, and cannabis and was described as causing 'addiction, misery, social degradation and death'.
Members of an organised crime gang which smuggled up to £7 billion worth of drugs from the continent hidden in fruit and vegetables have been jailed.
From south east England to Scotland, crime gangs were fed drugs from the OCG’s importations – which are believed to have contained more than 50 tonnes of drugs - the weight of around 30 family sized cars. Two criminal trials were needed to try the defendants - one trial lasted 23 months, a record in England and Wales, and the other lasted nine months.
And to avoid detection, the OCG 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 and often sent them back to the continent to act as another cover load.
The criminal charges against OCG members related to five separate smuggling plots. Green created a fake paper trail to smuggle £1.1m of amphetamine base oil in bottles of cream bought in Belgium. Each had different markings to denote the various OCGs they were destined for. A month later Green’s OCG was trying to smuggle 57kg of amphetamine, worth about £1.1m, from the Netherlands to 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 OCG’s offending became clearer.
Between 2016 and 2018 more than £1.5m passed through Green and his partner’s bank accounts. Between 2013 and 2018, Green only submitted two tax returns for cleaning and hairdressing businesses. He declared a profit of £7,405 for 2014-15, and a profit of £17,396 for 2015-16. 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.
Richard Harrison, NCA Regional Head of Investigations, said: “The offenders smuggled huge quantities of drugs into the UK. They had absolutely no ethics. They stooped incredibly low and left a trail of devastation for entirely innocent people by cloning businesses and stealing identities.
Drug Smuggling Organized Crime Paul Green The Big Fella Largest Drug Operation UK Sentencing
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