A Glasgow man is among 18 people to be convicted in the UK's 'biggest ever' drugs investigation.
Sohail Qureshi, who is from the city, was convicted of conspiracy to import cocaine and or heroin.
The 64-year-old was also convicted of conspiracy to import cannabis. He is yet to be sentenced.
NEW: Watch as Glasgow man arrested as part of UK's 'biggest ever' drugs investigation 😮🚨 pic.twitter.com/UU16zgrtvS
— Glasgow Times (@Glasgow_Times) December 2, 2024
READ MORE: Police discovered huge haul of drugs during bust in Glasgow
The offenders are thought to have smuggled several billions of pounds worth of heroin, cocaine, and cannabis to the UK.
From South East England to Scotland, crime gangs were fed drugs from the OCG's importations - which are believed to have contained more than 50 tonnes of drugs.
The Judge who presided over the trials said the drug smuggling was 'on an industrial and hitherto unprecedented scale'.
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Revealing the news, the crime agency said on Monday, December 9, at Manchester Crown Court, reporting restrictions were lifted upon verdicts in the second trial.
As part of the organised crime ring, six seizures of drugs with a total street value of £40million were made from the OCG, which was based in North West England with accomplices in the Netherlands, between the indictment period of August 2015 and September 2018.
However, officers proved there were at least 240 importations by the OCG, which went to great lengths to confuse the authorities and avoid justice.
The drug cartel was led by Paul Green, 59, who was caged for 32 years.
It set up a series of front companies and warehouses in England and the Netherlands to mask the serious offending.
Meanwhile, to avoid detection, the group concealed its drugs in consignments of strong-smelling foodstuffs such as onions, garlic and ginger.
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The international kingpins bought so many onions, between 40 tonnes and 50 tonnes a week, that they couldn’t get rid of them and often sent them back to the continent to act as another cover load.
The NCA said the gang exercised a 'high degree' of criminal tradecraft to evade capture.
According to investigators, Green rented a hotel room near his home in Widnes, Cheshire, so he could use its Wi-Fi without it being traced back to him.
Offenders used encrypted communications, faked documents, changed their names by deed poll and acquired live and defunct - but previously legitimate - businesses to disguise their drug importations.
As well as bringing in his own OCG’s drugs for subsequent sale, Green specialised in operating a smuggling route for other UK-based crime groups.
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The agency said the criminal charges against the gang related to five separate smuggling plots.
Green created a fake paper trail to smuggle £1.1million of amphetamine base oil in bottles of cream bought in Belgium.
However, a Border Force dog sniffed out the drugs which were hidden in a van on March 29, 2016.
The offenders used a front company cloned from a legitimate business in Truro, Cornwall, to try and smuggle 8kgs of cocaine worth nearly £1m into the country.
Conspirators rented a warehouse in Uithoorn, Northern Netherlands, and hid the cocaine in four cardboard boxes packed with ginger for deliveries to be made to warehouses they had rented in Bolton, Wigan and Ormskirk.
The OCG also rented warehouses in Leeds, Preston, Sheffield and Warrington throughout their offending.
In September 2016, the plot was foiled when an innocent Dutch truck driver employed to collect and deliver the consignment smelled a rat.
He then returned to his depot and called the cops who found eight 1kg bricks of cocaine.
The packages each had different markings to denote the various OCGs they were destined for.
A month after, Green's OCG tried to smuggle 57kg of amphetamine, worth about £1.1m, from the Netherlands to the UK.
However, sharp Dutch officers had the group members under surveillance and were listening to their phone calls.
But Leonard, of Kirkby, Merseyside, who was usually responsible for packing the group’s drugs in the Netherlands, and his accomplice went out drinking all night and left the van unguarded in Amstelveen, a southern suburb of Amsterdam.
In a recorded conversation, Green told one of them: “If the van’s gone or been grabbed by the police then there’ll be f***ing murders.”
When the duo returned the following morning from their drinking session, they got in the van and drove off but were immediately stopped by Dutch coppers.
The NCA has revealed Leonard has now been put behind bars for 24 years.
Meanwhile, in 2017, the group recruited Sohail Qureshi from Glasgow, Khaleed Vazeer, 58, and Ghazanfar Mahmood, 53, to develop a new transport route into the UK.
In 2018, after the NCA and Dutch Police began working together, the vast scale of the OCG’s offending became clearer.
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The forces joint work led to the seizure of 450kg of cocaine and heroin and two tonnes of cannabis across three seizures at the ports of Killingholme and Immingham, both Lincolnshire, and one in the Netherlands.
The NCA say Green was also convicted of fraud by false representation.
He and accomplice Leslie Kewin, 63, of Runcorn, Cheshire, stole a man’s identity and raised a £262,000 mortgage on the victim’s four-bedroom house in Mount Way, Waverton, near Chester, to pay for a drugs debt.
Instructed by Green, Kewin rented the property and changed his name by deed poll to the same as the landlord.
Kewin then claimed he owned the house and obtained the fraudulent mortgage, provided by a small finance company.
The gang then used the landlord's name to open bank accounts, create a company called Blackpool Fruit and Veg, and rent a warehouse in Leeds.
The kingpin's bank statements showed he and his wife spent more than £26,000 on watches and jewellery in the previous six months.
The crime agency also say between 2016 and 2018 more than £1.5m passed through Green and his partner’s bank accounts.
Meanwhile, between 2013 and 2018, Green only submitted two tax returns for cleaning and hairdressing businesses.
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He declared a profit of £7,405 for 2014-15, and a profit of £17,396 for 2015-16.
Judge Paul Lawton told the offenders: “It was only the dedication, persistence and professionalism of the National Crime Agency working in conjunction with their Dutch counterparts that the scale and complexity of your operation was unmasked.”
He added: “The harm caused beyond the importation is incalculable. You facilitated the distribution of drugs by organised crime groups the length and breadth of the country.
"The evidence disclosed drugs being despatched to locations as far apart as London and Scotland.
“What you were actually distributing was addiction, misery, social degradation and in some cases death.
"All of that was foreseeable and known by you.
"You were also facilitating serious organised crime on a national scale and the violence that forms an inherent part of that culture.”
Rob Jones, NCA Director General of Operations, said: “Without criminals like these, there would be no young teenagers dealing drugs through County Lines. There would be no turf war murders or innocent members of the public killed in the crossfire.
“Paul Green and his accomplices enabled and helped deliver this kind of suffering and misery in communities across the country. They were the crucial link in moving drugs from source countries abroad all the way to UK towns and cities where lives were wrecked by them.
“They thought they could hide behind a web of front companies, false personas and encrypted communications. They were wrong.
“NCA investigators worked tirelessly to identify this international organised crime group involved in industrial scale drug trafficking.
“Our officers’ meticulous work unmasked them and evidenced the scale of harm they were causing to UK communities.
“The team brought together multiple sources of evidence from overseas partners, seizures at ports and analysis of travel which has dismantled a group operating at the highest levels of organised crime.”
Richard Harrison, NCA Regional Head of Investigations, said: “The offenders smuggled huge quantities of drugs into the UK.
"They had absolutely no ethics.
"They stooped incredibly low and left a trail of devastation for entirely innocent people by cloning businesses and stealing identities.
“Tackling the drugs threat is a top priority for the agency and this investigation shows the lengths we will go to in order to protect the public.
“We worked with a wide array of partners at home and abroad, all of whom provided crucial assistance in helping us put these criminals behind bars.”
Minister for Crime and Policing, Dame Diana Johnson said: “This was an extremely complex operation involving a huge number of agencies working together.
"My thanks go to every single officer who helped to bring these criminals to justice.
“We are determined to bring these organised drug gangs to justice and our streets will be safer with these criminals no longer free to prey on vulnerable people in the name of profit.”
Sara Drysdale, Specialist Prosecutor from the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “This case is believed to involve the largest ever drug smuggling operation ever detected in the UK.
"The scale of the importations was immense and the total value of the drugs was worth up to an estimated £7 billion.
“The defendants convicted in this case include several of the higher-level organisers who financed and organised the drug shipments and who went to extraordinary and complex lengths to disguise their involvement.
“The series of conspiracies to import drugs into the UK culminated in an alliance between UK and Dutch Organised Crime Gangs to import drugs predominantly on behalf of numerous others.
"This was a highly organised operation bringing three to four shipments of drugs a week and involving hundreds of kilos of drugs.
“We would like to thank the comprehensive investigation work of the National Crime Agency.
"They provided the evidence needed to build a prosecution case which enabled us to seek justice against these 18 convicted defendants.
"We also extend our thanks to the Dutch investigating authorities for their assistance in the provision of key evidence.
“We will be pursuing confiscation proceedings against defendants convicted in this case to recover money and assets they gained from their criminality."
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