A crime ring with links throughout Europe has been caught red-handed after shipping £2 million of cannabis into Seaforth docks. The drugs were hidden among pallets of broccoli, kale and lettuce.
On May 21 a container was loaded onto a vessel in Sines, Portugal, destined for Seaforth Docks and on May 27, 20 pallets of kale, broccoli and lettuce "tightly wrapped in black plastic" were unloaded in Merseyside. Border Force officers carried out an X-ray on the pallets which this time revealed "anomalies".
The smugglers took careful steps to hide their plot, setting up a business under false names, hiring warehouse units in Malaga and the UK and even getting T-shirts printed bearing the logo of the front company; LB Wholesale. Earlier, the group organised a "dummy run", sending an innocent shipment of broccoli, aubergine and lettuce around a month before the illicit load.
Prosecutor Louise McCloskey: "This was a highly planned, well resourced and sophisticated criminal operation. Those involved created a legitimate cover company, utilised commercial storage premises, employed the services of bona fide transport and shipping companies and went as far as to have printed T-shirts displaying the logo of the false company LB Wholesale to create an air of legitimacy.
"The scale and method of the importation demonstrates how well resourced and well established the defendants are within Europe. The importation would have flooded the UK streets with controlled drugs generating huge profits for those at the upper end of the conspiracy."
Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk