Jail for crooks who hid £20m of cocaine in frozen chickens Drugs haul ‘one of the largest ever’
TWO Midland drug dealers have been jailed for a total of 36 years after police found £20 million of cocaine hidden in frozen chicken consignments.
Sixteen kilos of the drug were found in a secret compartment in a delivery van stopped in East London on October 24 last year.
GPS data revealed it had made four journeys to Sandwell, where Baldev Sahota supplied the driver with cardboard boxes containing cocaine to be taken back to the capital.
Another 168kg of cocaine was found hidden inside three pallets of frozen chicken by police who stopped a van Sahota was driving on the A45 last December.
Officers later raided an industrial unit they had staked out in Park Road, Hockley, where Shakti Gupta was present and where more cocaine and two encrypted mobile phones were recovered.
One contained messages referring to a “fresh supply” of 168 kilos, with one customer indicating that he wanted it all.
Birmingham Crown Court heard Gupta had received orders for 100 kilos of cocaine to be delivered by couriers to various locations in Birmingham.
More cardboard boxes, along with digital scales and around £1,400 in cash, were also found, along with MDMA (ecstasy) and a one kilogramme bag of cutting agent.
Gupta, 34, of Hagley Road West, Quinton, was jailed for 18 years while Sahota, 54, of Joining Banks, Oldbury, was handed a 16-year sentence.
Both had previously admitted conspiracy to supply cocaine.
A third man who had been supplied with drugs was previously jailed for ten years after he was stopped by police at an M6 service station, the court heard.
Passing sentence, Judge Peter Carr told them: “This is a conspiracy of supplying high-purity cocaine on a truly industrial scale.”
He said the sophistication of the conspiracy was illustrated by the CCTV system in the van stopped in London. The total amount of cocaine was 210 kilos, with a purity of between 82 and 86 per cent, he added.
That represented a wholesale value of around £6.5 million – and a street value of between £14 million and £25 million.
Gupta, he said, had been “close to the original source and had expected substantial financial gain”.
Balraj Bhatia, for Gupta, said: “He is a decent hard-working family man who put others above his own needs.”
He said he had trained as a gas engineer and used the unit to store plumbing equipment but his business had got into difficulties in late 2019. After meeting a man he agreed to allow the unit to be used for drugs and drug-related paraphenalia. He was not instrumental in the set-up of the conspiracy,” said Mr Bhatia. “His business was used for storage for onward distribution.”
Balbir Singh, for Sahota, said: “Sahota’s only contact with customers was making deliveries.
“He is the man who was sent out to do the dirty work, the dangerous work, the one on the ground.
“He was controlled and directed as to what to do. He was not into this to make himself rich.”
When the drugs bust was revealed in January after the pair’s pleas, police said they believed the drugs were intended for supply on the streets of London.
POLICE say the huge drugs seizure was one of the biggest ever seen in the UK.
Detective Superintendent Neil Ballard, from the Metropolitan Police’s Specialist Crime Command, said it sent a “clear message” to those involved in organised crime.
“This operation has resulted in one of the largest land seizures of cocaine within the UK,” he explained. “It is a significant find which demonstrates the scale of this organised drug supply operation which the Met has successfully dismantled. The audacity of those involved and the lack of consideration for the impact of their criminality is clear.
“We have continually stated there is an inextricable link between the supply of drugs and the violence we have seen unfolding on the streets. The distribution of this cocaine would have no doubt had a devastating impact.
“This should send a clear message to anyone involved in this type of organised criminality that we will not only go after those directly supplying drugs to our communities but we will use all the powers available to us to dismantle the wider networks and cut off the source of supply.
“I’m grateful to our colleagues from West Midlands Police who supported the Met in this operation and prosecution.”