London (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Londoners have been sentenced for smuggling 1,500 kilos of cannabis into the UK from Ghana in sacks of cassava flour.
Persons named Daniel Yeboah, Kristoffer Baidoo, and Kwaku Bonsu, all from London, and Edward Adjei from Grays, were found culpable after investigators found the drugs inside a shipping container at Tilbury Docks, Essex. While Yeboah was imprisoned for five years and Adjei for four years at Southwark Crown Court both Baidoo and Bonsu are on the escape, having failed to occur in court for trial. They were sentenced to ten years and seven years respectively in their absence.
The court attended how the container holding the drugs reached Tilbury Docks on December 19 2019 and was examined by Border Force officials for drugs after a tip-off from the Ghanaian authorities. They discovered 2,335 packages of herbal cannabis inside hessian bags of Gari powder, the flour from cassava roots, with a street value of about £4.3m.
How did authorities uncover the drug operation?
Investigators with the National Crime Agency replaced the cannabis with dummy packets and tracked them. The container was handled on the back of a lorry to an industrial yard in north London the following month where Yeboah inscribed for it under a false alias. Bonsu was then followed taking photos inside the container, while Adjei was stained dropping Baidoo off at the yard. Jurors described how all four fled the area in different cars after the container was opened, seemingly acknowledging the drugs were missing. All of them were apprehended later that day.
Operatives found a 10-tonne hydraulic press, usually used for compressing drugs, at Baidoo’s address. Phone calls caught on Adjei’s Toyota dash cam showed that he told Yeboah of his suspicions, stating: “My brother, be a little watchful. It is all a little dodgy.”
Text notes and emails seen on Baidoo’s mobile phone also revealed his plot to take delivery of the drugs at the yard, which he had rented under a phoney name to disguise his individuality.
NCA senior investigating officer Saju Sasikumar stated: “These men used their international contacts to import a huge amount of cannabis into the country. Its onward supply in the UK would have had a catastrophic impact on our communities, fuelling violence and exploitation through county lines drug dealing. Today’s result demonstrates the NCA’s commitment to targeting organised criminals operating at the top of the drug supply chain and ensuring they are put before the courts”.