£7 billion UK drug operation foiled when smuggler left his van to go drinking in Amsterdam

A £7 billion drug empire led by a gangster known as “The Big Fella” came crumbling down when one of the smugglers left his van full of amphetamines to go on an all-night drinking session inAmsterdam.

The 18-strong drug gang believed to be the largest drug operation ever detected in the UK were convicted on Monday with one judge describing the smuggling as “on an industrial and unprecedented scale”.

Ringleader Paul Green, 59, was the point of contact for numerous organised criminal groups (OCGs) who paid a fee to ship heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis into the UK.

Drugs would be hidden within pallets of onions, garlic or ginger to conceal their smell at the Dutch end of the enterprise and then shipped into the UK by innocent haulage firms.

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.

In September 2016 the plot was foiled when an innocent Dutch haulage driver employed to collect and deliver the consignment became suspicious. He returned to his depot and called the police who found eight 1kg bricks of cocaine.

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 57kgs 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 conversation recorded by police, Paul Green told one of his bungling smugglers: “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.

Among the gang’s customers was 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.

Prosecutor Andrew Thomas KC said a feature of the sequence of conspiracies between March 2016 and September 2018 was the “determination to continue the importations even after arrests and/or drug seizures”.

He told jurors: “As soon as one company became exposed, they would switch to another one.”

Only six seizures of drugs were made but National Crime Agency (NCA) investigators were able to prove at least 240 consignments took place with up to four shipments per week.

Among the many items of evidence gathered were messages on Green’s encrypted Encrochat phone, with his handler name of “Duckfarmer”, to accomplices in which he arranged shipments.

Green, 59, had no previous convictions but had changed his name twice by deed poll from Simon Swift to James Russell and then to Green due to financial difficulties and his self-confessed involvement in property and business fraud.

As well as his customers, Green also brought in drugs for his own gang to distribute for sale.

Sentencing, Judge Paul Lawton told gang members: “The harm caused beyond the importation is incalculable.

“What you were actually distributing was addiction, misery, social degradation and death.”

Green, from Widnes, Cheshire, was jailed for 32 years after he was convicted of conspiracy to import drugs and fraud by false representation.

His “right-hand man”, Steven Martin, 53, of Chorley Old Road, Bolton, Greater Manchester, who organised the finances, was imprisoned for 28 years, while another key member, Muhammad Ovais, 46, of Bournelea Avenue, Burnage, Manchester, who was in charge of distributing drugs to OCG customers, was sentenced to 27 years in jail.

Among others sentenced for drugs importation conspiracy charges were Leonard, 48, of Grosmont Road, Kirkby, Liverpool, who was jailed for 24 years; and Dutch gang bosses Johannes Vesters, 54, and Barbara Rijnbout, 53, both of Utrecht, who received prison terms of 20 years and 18 years.

Richard Harrison, NCA regional head of investigations, said: “This was an extremely high-harm OCG that used every tactic possible to evade detection and cheat justice.

“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.

“NCA officers and Dutch partners were tenacious and left no stone unturned in this investigation.”