London Evening Standard/London
Scotland Yard yesterday smashed a suspected multi-million pound cocaine-smuggling ring based at Heathrow airport.
In a series of co-ordinated dawn raids, detectives swooped on 11 men, including at least four cargo handlers employed by British Airways.
The international drugs trafficking operation is said to have used corrupt insiders at the UK’s biggest airport to allow millions of pound worth of cocaine to be imported into Britain.
A British organised crime gang based in west London is alleged to be at the centre of the plot and police are investigating links to Mexican drugs cartels.
The gang is suspected of bringing in up to £5mn worth of pure cocaine each year through Heathrow’s cargo shed.
The drugs were destined for the streets of London and the home counties and had a street value estimated to be tens of millions of pounds.
The 11 men, aged 25 to 53, were seized in raids on addresses in London and Essex.
They included the alleged “Mr Big” of the ring, a man said to be in his forties, who drives a top of the range Porsche.
A number of those arrested lived in Southall, near Heathrow.
Scotland Yard said the arrests were the climax of a year-long intelligence-led operation to dismantle “a well-established, organised criminal network”.
Police say the drugs would be hidden in legitimate cargo containers on BA flights to Heathrow from Mexico City. Once the aircraft arrived at the terminal, handlers would quickly remove the drugs and package them into new containers.
Couriers would then liaise with the cargo handlers, collect the drugs and pass them on for distribution in London. The gang “embedded” insiders within the organisation of Heathrow’s cargo handling operation to allow the drugs to be moved without raising suspicions.
Insiders were paid by the gang to create false paperwork for containers to transport the drugs so they would appear legitimate if they were checked by managers. Further arrests are expected abroad.
Detective superintendent Stephen Ratcliffe, of the Met’s Serious, Organised and Economic Crime Command, said: “These arrests are the culmination of a year-long operation and a lot of planning and hard work. We have dismantled what was a sophisticated, well-oiled, well-established operation involving a network of criminals from the cargo handlers to the couriers to the distributors all the way up to the top of the pile.
A British Airways spokesman said: “We are giving the Metropolitan Police our fullest support.”
