National Crime Agency (NGA) officers have thwarted what they described as Britain’s biggest-ever detected drug conspiracy in the country’s longest-ever-running criminal trial.
Eighteen members of an international organised crime group (OCG) are thought to have smuggled several billion pounds worth of heroin, cocaine and cannabis to the UK.
Crime gangs were fed drugs from the OCG’s importations, believed to have contained more than 50 tonnes of drugs — the weight of around 30 family-sized cars.
Six seizures of drugs with a total street value of £40m were made from the OCG, which was based in northwest England with accomplices in the Netherlands, between August 2015 and September 2018.