Four Ghanaian men have been convicted of smuggling £4.5 million worth of cannabis into the UK, hidden in sacks of gari powder.
The drugs were discovered by border force officers at Tilbury Docks in December 2019, following a National Crime Agency sting.
Daniel Yeboah, 54, Kristoffen Baidoo, 48, Kwaku Bonsu, 52, and Edward Adjei, 48, were found guilty after a three-week trial at Southwark Crown Court. The men, all from London and Grays, will be sentenced on October 18, 2024.
The cannabis haul, estimated to have a street value of £4.3 million, was intended for distribution in the UK, potentially fueling county lines activity, violence, and knife crime.
The National Crime Agency hailed the conviction as a significant success in the fight against organized crime.
Background
On the morning of 13 January 2020, the container travelled from Tilbury Docks on the back of a lorry to an industrial yard in north London under the watch of officers.
It was met by Yeboah, of Homerton High Street, who signed the delivery note using a fake signature and a worker at the yard removed the container seal with an angle grinder.
Bonsu, of Arthur Road, Edmonton, was observed by National Crime Agency officers circling round the industrial yard in his car before taking photographs of the container using his mobile phone, and Adjei was spotted dropping Baidoo off at the yard.
Seemingly realising the drugs were missing, they all then fled the site in different cars, abandoning the load shortly after the container was opened.
As the men left the area, officers were in tow, and all were arrested later that day – Yeboah and Adjei, of London Road, Grays, were arrested in Homerton, Baidoo in Stratford and Bonsu in Edmonton.
A 10-tonne hydraulic press, often used for compressing drugs, was found at Baidoo’s address and a number of devices were seized from the men, including mobile phones and dash cams from their vehicles.
Footage downloaded from the dash cam in Adjei’s Toyota picked up his phone calls to Baidoo and Yeboah shortly after the container arrived at the yard.
During a call with Yeboah, he said, “my brother, be a little watchful. It is all a little dodgy”.
Yeboah was also picked up on later calls telling Adjei, “I don’t think the food [drugs] is in it” and “there was Gari inside, they have removed most of the Gari. The people are thieves”.
Text messages and e-mails found on Baidoo’s mobile phone uncovered his plot to take delivery of the drugs at the yard, which he had rented under a fake name to disguise his identity.
It was also evidenced that a bank account belonging to Bonsu made multiple payments to a shipping company for the container to be delivered from Tilbury Docks to the north London yard.https://mx24online.com/
