Cocaine smuggler who used luxury yacht for £160million narcos plot jailed for 18 years
27.05.2022 - 00:43
/ dailyrecord.co.uk
A drugs smuggler has been caged for 18 years after a massive haul of cocaine was discovered by authorities during a national crime operation.
Andrew Cole was sentenced at court on Thursday after he confessed to trying to smuggle two tonnes of class A drugs with a street value worth up to £160million into the UK.
Cole was travelling on a luxury yacht, Kahu, when it was stopped about 80 miles off the coast of Plymouth on September 9 2021.
In an operation led by the National Crime Agency and supported by Border Force and the Australian Federal Police, 33-year-old Cole was found to be the link between senior members of an international organised crime group and a UK group who were planning for the arrival of the drugs near the English Channel.
The operation saw the Border Force Maritime Command’s 42-metre cutter ‘Searcher’ and 19-metre coastal patrol vessel ‘Alert’ covertly identify and monitor the movements of the yacht.
The operation was intercepted just north of Guernsey, where specialist highly-skilled NCA and Border Force officers boarded Kahu, and found a massive haul of cocaine, according to Teesside Live.
Cole, , of Norton Road in Stockton, admitted smuggling the Class A drugs in January, and five other men, the captain and four crew members, were acquitted by a jury.
In the months leading up to the interception of the Jamaican-flagged yacht, Cole was involved in planning the smuggling operation and travelled to Costa Rica and Panama in May 2021. In July he then flew to Miami, and the following day to Barbados, where the yacht arrive on July 29.
During the journey across the Atlantic, Cole had control of a Samsung mobile phone which he and the crew used to contact others. The phone’s messages show the Kahu was to