White sniffs of Dover
Drug dealers rented Miriam Margolyes’s holiday home and used garden as helicopter drop-off for millions of pounds worth of cocaine and heroin
PERCHED on the historic White Cliffs of Dover, it should have been the perfect holiday home for those keen on bracing walks and views across the Channel.
Unfortunately for actress Miriam Margolyes, however, the tenants of her picturesque cottage had less wholesome pursuits in mind.
They rented the secluded £350a-week home to use as a base to smuggle heroin and cocaine worth millions of pounds, a court heard yesterday.
The gang flew Class A drugs from Holland in a helicopter, landing in the grounds of Gun Emplacement Cottage, which Miss Margolyes has owned for 42 years.
Properties in Buckinghamshire, Essex and other parts of Kent were also used as Dutch pilots dropped off at least six consignments, Liverpool Crown Court was told. The drugs were then couriered across the UK for sale, mainly in the North East and Scotland.
Miss Margolyes’s property, Gun Emplacement Cottage – built by the Army in 1910 and once owned by Sir Peter Ustinov – was used for a drop-off on April 13, 2016, when 350lb of cocaine worth at least £5.5million was delivered to the gang.
There is no suggestion the Bafta-winning actress, 78, who played Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films and appeared in The Real Marigold Hotel, knew anything about the crooks’ activities.
Police estimate that the gang brought at least half a ton of cocaine with a wholesale value of £17.25million into the UK over a five- month period between December 2015 and April 2016.
Kyra Badman, prosecuting, told the court that Cleveland Police launched an investigation, codenamed Operation Spoonbill, to discover how large quantities of drugs were making it on to the streets in the North East.
They found that much of the cocaine and heroin was being supplied to the leader of an organised crime group in the region, who cannot be named for legal reasons, by a 12-strong gang based on the Wirral, Merseyside, led by businessman Lance Kennedy, 32.
Kennedy, a former director of a sofa company, sourced the drugs from Holland and chartered helicopters, piloted by two Dutch nationals, who are now serving 18 years in prison, to deliver them.
Six helicopter flights were traced to Kennedy, including one to Miss Margolyes’s holiday home, which has been described as the nearest house to France.
Other flights were made to different parts of Kent, Marlow in Buckinghamshire and Waltham Abbey in Essex.
Miss Badman told the court: ‘ The trusted nature of the relationship between Kennedy and [the] Cleveland man meant that the North East Organised Crime Group were obtaining Class A drugs for as little as £34,500 per kilo.
‘Even at those prices, the wholesale value of the drugs imported by the Kennedy OCG would be in the region of £17.25million.’
Kennedy’s gang used vehicles that had been converted to incorporate hidden compartments to stash cash and drugs, she said.
In one Audi A6, police found £ 69,000 in a compartment opened by operating the cigarette lighter, which caused the rear seats to flip down.
The gang employed Steven Maddocks to count and launder the vast amounts of cash generated by their drug crime.
When arrested, Maddocks, 32, was found with £30,000 at his home in Rock Ferry, Wirral. He admitted laundering cash via his bank account and wages.
Following the arrest of several gang members, Kennedy and his deputy Robert Stewart, 38, also from the Wirral, fled to Thailand. They were subsequently caught trying to enter Ukraine from Moldova and extradited to the UK.
Jailing the gang, Judge Sophie McKone said they had ‘cynically reaped the rewards’ of a drugs operation that caused suffering to countless people.
‘You did all this out of greed,’ she said. ‘ It is selfishness beyond contemplation.’
Kennedy was jailed for 18 years and four months.
Stewart, who travelled the UK delivering the drugs, was jailed for 13 years and eight months.
Another eight men and one woman involved in the plot received sentences ranging from 14 years and three months to eight years and eight months.
All were either convicted of or admitted conspiracy to supply Class A drugs. Money launderer Maddocks was jailed for four years.
Detective Sergeant John Fitzpatrick of Cleveland police, who led Operation Spoonbill, said after the gang were jailed: ‘The volume of Class A drugs attributable to this group is huge and the damage caused locally and nationally by this evil trade is unquantifiable.’
Miss Margolyes’s agent declined to comment.
‘You did this out of greed’