Jailed for 27 years, big cheese in the drugs world
Kingpin busted for hiding £17m of cocaine in Gouda
A DRUGS boss who hid millions of pounds worth of cocaine in blocks of Dutch cheese saw his luck melt away when police raided the illicit operation.
Saleem Chaudhri, 46, had just taken possession of £17.2 million of the Class A drug from a courier when officers turned up at his rented premises at an old fire station in Blackburn.
A large amount of the haul, imported from Belgium and the biggest ever to be discovered by authorities in Lancashire, was hidden in wax-covered blocks of Gouda cheese. Some of the cocaine was undisguised but contained in black bin bags, Preston Crown Court was told.
The technique of hiding drugs in food has long been used by criminal gangs across the world, with other examples including heroin disguised as coffee and substances smuggled in hollowedout fruit.
Police arrested Chaudhri on May 3 last year – just before he had been due to hand 67kg to one courier and 63kg to another for distribution around the UK.
Another gangster, Rieadul Mohabath, 28, who officers found had been directing couriers to Blackburn to collect the cocaine, was arrested two months later in his native South Shields, Tyne and Wear.
Chaudhri and Mohabath are now beginning lengthy sentences totalling more than 40 years.
Sentencing, Judge Graham Knowles KC jailed Chaudhri for 27 and a half years after he admitted conspiracy to supply cocaine and money laundering.
Mohabath admitted conspiring to supply cocaine and was jailed for 16 years.
Lancashire Police said that when Chaudhri’s home in Waterside, Blackburn, was searched, officers found nearly £ 10,000 in cash. The force added that evidence showed Chaudhri agreed to sell more than 2,000kg of cocaine worth more than £70 million between September 2022 and May 2023.
An address linked to Mohabath in Jarrow, South Shields, contained ‘a significant amount of cash, a cash-counting machine and suspected Class A drugs of varying weights’.
Detective Sergeant Haydn Sibley, of Lancashire Police, said: ‘Chaudhri and his associates went to great lengths to hide their product and with the amount of cocaine seized – the biggest haul ever in Lancashire – you can understand why. When we arrested Chaudhri, you could see by the look on his face that his world had crumbled.’
‘His world had crumbled’