Two Dutch sentenced to up 18 and 20 years in prison in British drug trafficking case
Four Dutch people were among 18 convicted by a British court for smuggling “up to 7 billion pounds” of drugs into the United Kingdom between August 2015 and September 2018, the local police said. Two of the Dutch were sentenced to 18 and 20 years in prison, the other two were given lower sentences.
54-year-old Johannes V. from Utrecht was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and 53-year-old Barbara R., also from Utrecht, must serve 18 years. 35-year-old Maxime van M. from Amsterdam received a 2-year prison sentence, 6 months of which were suspended. And 24-year-old Ian H. from Utrecht was given a suspended sentence of two years.
The other gang members are mostly British. The highest sentence was 32 years in prison imposed on gang leader Paul Green.
The police described the case as “the United Kingdom’s biggest ever detected drugs conspiracy.” The trial, which took 23 months, was also the longest ever in the country’s history.
According to the court, the offenders smuggled heroin, cocaine, and cannabis from the European mainland to the United Kingdom “on an industrial and hitherto unprecedented scale. “
The gang operated from behind a “series of front companies and warehouses in England and the Netherlands.” The drugs were hidden in consignments of “strong-smelling foodstuffs such as onions, garlic and ginger,” the police said. “The crime group bought so many onions – between 40 tons and 50 tons 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 police intercepted six drug transports worth 40 million pounds but found evidence of at least 240 imports.
