The Turkish drug lord ...of Glossop
Gang boss who’d been kicked out by Germany is let into Britain – then imports £63m of heroin
A TURKISH drug kingpin was allowed into this country where he tried to flood the streets with heroin – despite being kicked out of Germany over a similar plot.
Fikri Yarasir – called Mario because of his likeness to the Super Mario video game character – had served a ten-year sentence Germany after being caught trying to import heroin from Turkey.
But, despite being barred from returning to that country, nothing was done to stop him moving to Britain and resuming his drug trafficking career.
Yarasir ran a kebab shop in Glossop, Derbyshire, and headed a furniture import business – a front for smuggling high-purity heroin from Turkey.
In one of the largest seizures of the class A drug the country has ever seen, officers last summer found 210kg at an industrial unit. Had it reached street dealers, the haul would have been worth around £63million. Offic- ers also discovered 53-year-old Yarasir had smuggled £372,500 in cash back to Turkey.
Prosecutors said he also appeared to be involved in buying a factory in Turkey for £1million, even though he claimed to be earning as little as £12,000-a-year.
Yesterday, as the crook and his six gang members were jailed for a total of 110 years, the Home Office was facing questions over why it wasn’t able to stop Yarasir from moving to Britain.
While it was unclear last night whether Yarasir had a Turkish or EU passport. Citizens of other EU countries currently have the right to live and work in the UK and having a criminal conviction is not enough to bar entry. Turks need a visa to travel to Britain, but a deal in place until earlier this year allowed Turkish business people already in this country to apply for indefinite leave to remain.
Last August police filmed Yarasir meeting an articulated lorry with a Turkish registration plate at an industrial unit in Salford. Yarasir, who ran a pizza and kebab shop called Yummies in Glossop, was met by Ahmet Taskin and between them they moved the cargo of furniture
inside. Later, police raided the unit and prised the tops off 42 tables, finding hidden inside each ten half-kilo bags of heroin – a total of 210kg. Tests proved the heroin was of such high purity that it would yield a street value of around £63million, the largest haul seized in Greater Manchester. On the same day, officers entered a lockup in Rhyl, North Wales where they found equipment for a ‘bash house’, where drugs are mixed with other substances before being distributed.
A week earlier Yarasir had been there to meet associates Steven Hindley – who rented the unit – and David Mulligan.
Fellow gang member Brian Kennedy was drafted in as a ‘logistics’ man. He opened a business called Freight Forward Ltd, but officers found he had only one customer – Yarasir.
Checks showed large amounts of money moving through the bank account of Kathryn Fearon to Freight Forward Ltd over several months, linked to imports for Yarasir. Fearon and her partner Paul Livesey were used as mules to take money to Turkey.
Yarasir brazenly claimed he had only become involved to become a police informant – but he did not try to give information to the police at any time.
During the seven-week trial, it was revealed he had been convicted in Germany in 1997 for importing heroin from Turkey.
Details of his activities in this country were revealed yesterday after the final member of the gang was jailed. Judge Martin Walsh said Yarasir played a ‘leading role’.
Detective Inspector Lee Griffin, of Greater Manchester Police said the gang tried to cover their
‘Claimed to be an informant’
tracks but ‘failed at simple hurdles like leaving fingerprints and traceable bank transfers.’
Along with Yarasir, Livesey, 46, Fearon, 34, Kennedy, 37, and Taskin, 45, were found guilty of conspiracy to import Class A drugs at Manchester Crown Court. Taskin, Yarasir, Hindley, 28, and Mulligan, 27, were convicted of conspiracy to supply.
Yarasir was jailed for 25 years. The others received sentences of between 18 and nine years.