Drug baron seized in villa swoop is jailed for 18 years
A BRITISH drug baron who ran a £60 million cocaine smuggling racket while in hiding at a Spanish villa has been jailed for 18 years.
Paul Monk, 56, had shipped huge quantities of cocaine and cannabis from Europe into Britain.
When he was caught in 2015 at his villa near B enidorm, Monk was instructing workmen as they laid marble tiles around his swimming pool. Detectives found accounting notes about the supply of 997 kilos of cocaine with a street value of £59.8 million, as well as an imitation firearm and silencer, 125,000 euros stashed in a plant pot and a fake Slovenian passport.
The high-purity cocaine was smuggled into Britain in the back of lorries from Spain in 2014 and 2015 before being diluted and sold on the streets, the Old Bailey heard.
Monk, who used to live in Hornchurch, Essex, had fled from the UK to Spain in 2013 while on licence from a nine-year sentence for supplying cannabis.
Spanish police said he never left his villa for fear he would be shot dead by rival drug dealers or arrested, and he relied on friends to bring him food as he “led the life of an authentic fugitive”.
Jailing Monk for 18 years, Judge Anuja Dhir QC said he was “at the very highest level in the drugs world”, and added: “I am satisfied that you played a leading role in this conspiracy.”
Monk had been jailed in 2007 for a £3 million cannabis smuggling plot, stashing the drugs in air conditioning units at his business premises in Grays, Essex.
After being released on licence Monk fled to Spain but police obtained a European arrest warrant for him in 2014 and captured him in April the following year, filming the dramatic arrest as they raided his villa.
Monk was quizzed over the gangland murder of drug dealer Francis Brennan, whose body was found washed up on a Costa Blanca beach, but no charges have been brought against him.
Detective Sergeant David Williams, who led the Met Police efforts to capture Monk, said: “He is a career criminal who showed a disregard for the laws of the UK after he fled to Spain in 2013 to escape justice.
“He obtained false identity documents in order to evade authorities while he continued to run an international drug supply network from his home in Spain.”
Mr Williams thanked Spanish police for helping to arrest Monk, who pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to conspiracy to supply class A drugs and a separate c h a r ge o f supplying a kilogram of cocaine.