Members of an organised crime gang which smuggled up to £7bn worth of drugs into the UK from the continent have been jailed.
The gang was behind what is believed to be the biggest drug smuggling operation ever detected in the UK.
Judge Paul Lawton described the gang’s drug smuggling operation as being “on an industrial and hitherto unprecedented scale”.
The defendants were separated into two trials at Manchester Crown Court with reporting restrictions lifted following the conclusion of the second trial which lasted nine months.
The first trial was 23 months, the longest ever in England and Wales.
The lifting of the reporting restrictions means the details of the investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA) can now be revealed.
The gang’s ringleader Paul Green, 59, known as The Big Fella, was the point of contact for numerous organised criminal groups who paid a fee to ship heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis into the UK.
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Green and his fellow conspirators went to “extraordinary lengths” to disguise their involvement as they set up a series of front companies and warehouses in the Netherlands and the north of England by the use of false and stolen identities.
Drugs were hidden within pallets of fresh produce at the Dutch end of the enterprise and then shipped into the UK by innocent haulage firms before the criminals would remove the drugs for distribution to their fee-paying customers as part of the “transport service”.
Onions, garlic or ginger were often the produce of choice as they helped conceal any smell of drugs.
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.
Only six seizures of drugs were made but NCA investigators were able to prove at least 240 consignments took place with up to four shipments per week.
The judge told gang members: “The harm caused beyond the importation is incalculable. What you were actually distributing was addiction, misery, social degradation and death.”
Prosecutor Andrew Thomas KC told the jury 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.”
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, from Bolton, who organised the finances, was imprisoned for 28 years, while another key member, Muhammad Ovais, 46, of Burnage in Manchester, who was in charge of distributing drugs to gang customers, was sentenced to 27 years in jail.
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Among others sentenced for drugs importation conspiracy charges were fluent Dutch speaker Russell Leonard, 48, of Kirkby, Liverpool, who was jailed for 24 years; and Dutch crime bosses Johannes Vesters, 54, and Barbara Rijnbout, 53, both of Utrecht, who received prison terms of 20 years and 18 years respectively.
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Richard Harrison, NCA regional head of investigations, told Sky News: “Criminals like these have no regard to the public.
“It’s all about their greed and it’s all financially driven.
“Paul Green, who was a principal here, recruited people to work in his crime group, he duped innocent members of the public using their bank accounts. Even on one occasion, he took out a mortgage in an innocent member of the public’s name to repay a drug debt.
“That’s the lengths these people go to.”
