Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Cocaine OAPS offered us a hol if we’d bring new suitcases back
Ex-pal of smuggle accused says ‘it could have been us’
TWO British OAPS accused of smuggling £2million of cocaine allegedly offered to pay for another couple’s dream cruise if they brought back new designer cases for them.
Expats Pauline and Paul Craven claim they were befriended by Roger Clarke, 72, and wife Susan, 70, while living on Spain’s Costa Blanca.
The Clarkes are being held in Portugal after allegedly being caught with nine kilos of cocaine in their suitcases when cruise ship MS Marco Polo docked in capital Lisbon last Tuesday.
Pauline, who was a part-time cleaner for the Clarkes, said they invited her and Paul on a freebie trip to the Caribbean. And the 60-yearold, of Bolton, Lancs, said they suggested buying cheap designer suitcases and bringing them back so they could be resold in London for a profit.
Speaking from Guardamar del Segura, near Alicante, she said: “I feel like we’re two very lucky people. That could so easily have been us.
“They asked us last year to accompany them on a Caribbean cruise. I started a job cleaning their home in Spain, near where we live parttime, and they very quickly befriended us.
“It was a dream of a lifetime. Roger told us he imported pineapples from the Caribbean to the UK in containers and he wanted me on the ship to keep his wife company.
“They offered to pay for everything. It seemed too good to be true and it was. They started saying we should buy designer suitcases in the Caribbean because they could pick them up cheap and we could sell them to Harrods for two or three times more.
“Then they said we’d need to put our clothes in the cases. I couldn’t understand how we’d be able to sell for a profit when they were secondhand because they would have been used. We turned them down when I checked their story that the suitcases were sold in Harrods and discovered Harrods didn’t stock them. I got asked to stop cleaning soon after we said we didn’t want to go.”
Regular cruisers Roger and Sue were held after sailing from the Bahamas, when Portuguese police reportedly got a search warrant after a tip-off from British police. Susan, originally from Northamptonshire, is in Portugal’s only women’s jail in Lisbon’s Tires area. Roger is a few miles away in the cellblocks of the Policia Judiciara.
Yesterday, a neighbour in Guardamar said of Roger: “He didn’t stand out as someone that’s well off or down at heel [but] they were on holiday a lot. What he did stand out for was his bullsh**. He said he imported fruit from the Caribbean to London, which I always thought was a lie.
“He also said he’d been a boxer, paramedic and a chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant. I didn’t believe anything that came out of his mouth.”
THE CLARKES IN GUARDAMAR WARRANT