Crime Solicitors

The Old Bailey has sentenced two Essex men to more than 25 years in jail for a major drug smuggling operation.

Anthony Dennis and Anthony Wilson were involved in the importation of cocaine from South America. The two men – based in Essex – imported the drugs by inserting them into shipping containers carrying legitimate cargo from South America.

Once the container reached the European port, an associate would open the container, extract the drugs and reseal it – and then the container would continue to its destination.

In 2013, a programme of co-ordinated arrests relating to the illegal drugs trade took place in Holland, Germany and in the UK.

Since 2012, the Dutch National Crime Squad had been investigating a hub of drug trafficking and money laundering, run from a cafe in Rotterdam called the Cafe de Ketel.

The investigation revealed that the cafe was a front for criminal activity of two brothers and their associates – and those who visited the cafe to meet with them were involved in the importation and distribution of drugs.

The Dutch authorities were able to covertly record some of those meetings.

Dennis and Wilson's operations went wrong when they failed to extract a consignment of 67.5kg of cocaine from a shipping crate in the port at Antwerp in Belgium.

The drugs were discovered by German police before they could retrieve it, and the crate went on to its final destination.

At the Old Bailey, Dennis and Wilson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a foreign drug trafficking offence, namely to import cocaine into the Netherlands. They were sentenced on Thursday (19/11/15) to more than 25 years in jail.

After the hearing, specialist prosecutor in the CPS Organised Crime Division, Anthony Hill, said:

“These men worked with criminals overseas to plan a large and complex drug-smuggling operation, plotting to bring up to three tonnes of cocaine from South America. If successful, this would have flooded the streets of Europe with drugs worth hundreds of millions of Euros.

“Their criminal activity was co-ordinated overseas – but so was the response from the criminal justice system.

“We worked closely with Dutch authorities and the National Crime Agency and the strength of our evidence left the defendants with no choice but to plead guilty.”

The National Crime Agency's Regional Head of Investigations, Brendan Foreman, added:

“Dennis and Wilson joined forces with international criminals to bring up to three tonnes of cocaine into Europe, some of which was highly likely to have ended up on UK streets.”

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