Keith Morez, 60, from Sevenoaks, and his unemployed fellow gang members Chris Brown, 55, from Greenhithe, and Gerard Dutton, 61, from Suffolk, were each given 10-year sentences at Kingston Crown Court.The Metropolitan Police’s Projects Team spent several months investigating the organised criminal network, which involved importing and supplying cannabis from southern Spain, as part of Operation Cromer.
Det Insp Grant Johnson said: “This group was highly organised in the way they imported drugs.“They used criminal contacts in the UK and Spain, going out of their way to disassociate themselves from the cargo by using false companies and deliberately deceiving legitimate haulage companies.”The Met’s Projects Team passed intelligence onto Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) officers who searched a Spanish registered lorry in April last year finding 1.5 tonnes of cannabis resin with a street value of around £4.2million.The lorry was seized in Coquelles Port in Normandy, France, and had been travelling from Murcia in Spain bound for the UK. The drugs were found hidden in six pallets of floor tiles when the vehicle reached England.In July, 2008, another Spanish-registered lorry was stopped by HMRC officers at the Port of Dover where they discovered 1.56 tonnes of the now class B substance worth around £4m that had been hidden in pallets of ‘dressed stone’.Intelligence from the seizures led Guardia Civil Grupo de Drogas officers to search a warehouse in southern Spain where a further 690 kilos of cannabis valued at £1.93m was found.
DI Grant Johnson said: “Both of these lorry loads were significant seizures, headed for the streets of the capital and these sentences are testament to how seriously both the police and judicial system, take this dangerous, newly reclassified, class B drug.”Morez, of Billet Hill, ran a legitimate traffic management company but was found to be a senior member of the drug network, the Met said.He acted as Brown’s right-hand man, liaising with criminals in Spain and was responsible for transporting the drugs once they reached the UK.Police arrested him in October last year while he was in his car on the A20 in Kent. He pleaded guilty on January 13 this year before sentencing at Kingston with the other men last Friday.Detectives found that Brown was in total control of the importation side of the trafficking and actively involved in both lorry hauls of drugs seized.He was seen meeting face-to-face with Spanish drug suppliers and kept in telephone contact with Morez and Dutton.
Brown was arrested in his car near the Dartford Bridge in July last year.Dutton set up two fake companies so the gang could use them to employ legitimate haulage companies to import the loads of cannabis from Spain into the UK.He was arrested in north Yorkshire in July last year. Police said the lorry drivers and haulage companies involved in the case were innocent victims and had been duped into believing they were carrying genuine loads of tiles and stone.Bob Gaiger, a spokesman for HMRC, said: “This is a perfect example of the successful working partnership that exists between the Met Police and HMRC.“We will continue to work together to prevent drugs from entering the UK and harming our communities. We will not only focus on those transporting these deadly drugs, but also those who mastermind and finance this illegal activity.”
