Drug runner must cough up
A DRUGS runner has been ordered to give up cash and properties in Costa del Sol paid for through his role in a lucrative smuggling ring.
Gordon Ruckledge, of Ashton-underLyne, must pay up £396,653.71 within three months after National Crime Agency investigators obtained a confiscation order.
The 47-year-old must also give up properties in the UK and Spain.
Ruckledge is the joint owner of 11 properties in the UK, including four in Manchester, three in Halifax and one each in Stockport, Ashton-under-Lyne, Leeds, and Consett in County Durham.
He also owner or coowned two properties in Benalmadena on the Costa del Sol in Spain.
If Ruckledge fails to pay up an extra four years will be added to his current 16-and-a-half year jail time for drug trafficking and money laundering.
During the confiscation hearing at Leeds Crown Court on Wednesday, a judge found Ruckledge benefited from general criminal conduct by £1,619,747.90 and his available assets were found to total £396,653.71.
NCA officers raided Ruckledge’s home in Taunton Road, Ashton-underLyne, in September 2016 and found more than a thousand ecstasy tablets, a kilo of high purity cocaine and two thousand pills labelled as temazepam and tramadol, both class C drugs, as well as around £50,000 and EUR14,000 in cash. Officers also found dozens of mobile phones and specialist stamps used to add brand logos to ecstasy tablets.
Ruckledge pleaded guilty to 10 drug and money laundering offences in March 2017.
The investigation into his criminal activity began after Ruckledge’s brother-in-law, Christopher Still, was sentenced for 12-and-a-half years in June 2015 after he admitted playing a role in importing 90 kilos of MDMA, found by Border Force officers at Killingholme Port.
The drugs were concealed within pallets of frozen chicken. NCA officers discovered the same load of chicken was used as a cover for at least seven other importations, which had been brokered by Ruckledge in the Netherlands.
After Still’s arrest investigators raided a business unit in Leeds, registered to Bayrose trading, a company listed in Ruckledge’s name. They found another 30 kilos of amphetamine and a number of chemical cutting agents. Dutch police watched Ruckledge meet with drugs supplier Raza Ali in Amsterdam. Ali was later arrested and jailed in the Netherlands.
He later told detectives he had been supplying Ruckledge.
Peter Frain, NCA senior investigating officer, said: “If he fails to pay his confiscation order then he will have another four years imprisonment added to his sentence.” Peter Frain, NCA officer