A criminal group made up of one Bulgarian and four Albanians , was found guilty by a British court of trying to smuggle cocaine from Latin America worth around £200m into the UK, the BBC reported, citing BTA.
The shipment is believed to be one of the most significant discovered in Britain.
Bulgarian citizen Petko Zhutev and Albanians Gergiy Diko and Bruno Kutsi pleaded guilty to involvement in the trafficking, and two other Albanians, Eric Mutsi and Olsi Ebeya, were found guilty by a court in London. The verdicts are expected on November 11.
For the operation, the traffickers used a company for importing fruit from abroad, which was established on the market, but in December 2020 it changed its ownership, and Zhutev was appointed as its director. According to the police, this is an example of how criminal elements take over legitimate import and export companies that are less likely to arouse suspicion.
In February 2021, Zhutev signed for an expected shipment of bananas from Colombia at the company's warehouse in North London. Meanwhile, 41 pallets of bananas arrived at the port of Portsmouth by cargo ship and were transported by truck to the British capital.
However, the members of the criminal group did not know that the actual contents of the shipment were already known to the law enforcement services, who had intelligence information.
The banana containers contained over 2,330 blocks of cocaine, each weighing around 1kg and worth £30,000. As soon as the shipment arrived, the police replaced the cocaine with real bananas, and listening devices were placed in some of the boxes. Two undercover policemen posing as lorry drivers delivered the cargo from Portsmouth to the warehouse in London. There they were met by Zhutev, Diko and Kutsi. After Zhutev signed for receiving the goods, police officers from the special forces broke into the warehouse and detained the suspects. During the arrest, a loaded revolver was also found in the warehouse.
A UN report last year said global cocaine production had reached record levels, and Albanian-speaking groups were distributing the drug in many parts of Europe, particularly the UK and the Netherlands.
/PC/
Source: www.bta.bg