Drug traffickers paid smuggler

TWO drug traffickers who paid a man to smuggle more than £100,000 of cocaine through Manchester Airport have been jailed.

He was stopped by border officers who discovered a kilo of the drug wrapped around his torso underneath his shirt last year.

Now a man and woman have been jailed for a total of 24 years.

Gillian Weldrick, 53, from Huddersfield and Ortis Dexter Ollivierre, 45, from Barbados, were sentenced to 12 years each for drug smuggling and money laundering at Minshull Street Crown Court on Wednesday.

Andrew McCollin, was sentenced to four years and six months in October last year after admitting importing cocaine.

The plot was foiled when Border Force officers stopped McCollin at the airport in September 2016 after he flew in from Barbados.

He had clear packets of cocaine wrapped around his body. The drugs were said to have a street value of £115,000.

Officers from the National Crime Agency (NCA) arrested Weldrick at the airport, where she had come to meet McCollin. They found that she and Ollivierre had paid for and arranged Andrew McCollin’s flight from Barbados.

They also discovered several unexplained payments of thousands of pounds made by Welldrick to Ollivierre in Barbados.

NCA officers arrested Ollivierre as he entered the country via Gatwick Airport in May this year and both he and Weldrick were charged with conspiracy to import drugs and money laundering.

NCA operations manager Jon Hughes said: “In this case the criminals were bringing in cocaine but, once set up, smuggling routes can be used to bring in everything from firearms to victims of modern slavery.”