LONDON: A pilot nicknamed Biggles has been jailed for 19 years for smuggling £33.5m worth of cocaine into Britain.
Andrew Wright, 52, who took his name from the fictional aviator and adventurer, imported 268kg (591lb) of the class-A drug in eight return trips between Breighton airfield in Selby, North Yorkshire, and Germany over three months in the autumn of 2014.
Wright was jailed at the Old Bailey along with the plot’s mastermind Mark Dowling, 43, and his trusted lieutenant Jamie Williams, 38, who received 24 years and 23 years respectively.
The judge Nicholas Cooke QC said the amount they had smuggled was “off the scale” and of “exceptional seriousness”.
Wright, who owned two Cessna light aircraft, used his aerial photography business Skyviews R Us as a cover for his illegal activities.
Williams would get the drugs from the Netherlands and then drive to Kassel airport in Hesse, Germany, to load them on to Wright’s plane before returning to the UK overland, the court heard.
Once back in Britain, Williams would travel to Selby to collect the drugs from Wright and deliver them to Dowling in Essex.
On 17 November 2014 after Wright touched down in Selby with his latest consignment, a border control officer searched his Porsche Cayenne 4×4 vehicle and discovered four bricks of cocaine in the boot. A further 30 blocks were found stashed in bags in the tail section of his plane. In all, the cocaine had a total street value of £4.25m, the court heard.
When Dowling’s house in Brentwood, Essex, was searched, police recovered documentation indicating the scale of the operation. In a very short space of time, large sums of money had been generated and at one point the plotters had nearly £2m at their disposal, the court heard.
Dowling paid Williams a flat rate of £12,000 plus expenses for his involvement, while Wright, 52, received £1,500 per kg imported.
The court heard that the gang used several literary references as well as the famed hero Biggles by WE Johns. Other names bandied around included Ginger, Biggles’s companion, and Skippy.
Williams, of Romford, Dowling and Wrightpleaded guilty at a previous hearing to their part in the drug smuggling plot between 1 September and 18 November 2014.
Williams was also sentenced for separate drugs, firearms and money laundering offences relating to January 2015. Dowling admitted separate offences of transferring criminal property, possessing criminal property and cannabis and cocaine supply.
In mitigation for Wright, Tom Gent told the court that he had been in financial difficulties having “taken the eye off the ball” of his legitimate aerial photography business after his wife’s son died in a road crash.
The judge told him that of, all the defendants, his was a “personal tragedy” but he had to bear in mind that cocaine could“ruin lives”.
In the year 2014-15, a total of 3.387 tons of cocaine was seized in the UK, of which the amount smuggled by Wright and his plotters comprised 8%.
The court had heard that Dowling was not the head of the entire operation and there were more people higher up the supply chain abroad who were outside of British jurisdiction.
