Cocaine plot ringleader gets 25 years

THE RINGLEADER behind a plot to smuggle cocaine with a street value of pounds 28m, gift-wrapped in four suitcases, through Stansted airport was jailed yesterday for 25 years.

Relatives and friends gasped as a judge at Bristol Crown Court sentenced Jamaican-born Derek Gregory, 26, who organised the scheme to import 45kg of cocaine.

But Gregory, known as 'the boss' by gang members, showed little emotion as he left the dock, his hands clasped in front of him and flanked by a prison officer.

His half-brother, Ernest Ford, 33, of Streatham, south-west London, was jailed for 12 years, and Lee Cameron, 22, from Bristol, for 13 years, for their part in the plot to bring top-quality Bolivian cocaine into Britain.

Judge David McCarraher, passing sentence, said that while the drug had a wholesale value of pounds 7.3m, it would have fetched around pounds 28m in street-level deals.

Customs officers swooped as the suitcases were being brought through the nothing-to-declare channel at Stansted airport, Essex. It was the biggest seizure of drugs in passenger luggage in Britain.

The men appeared yesterday for sentencing, but earlier in the trial the jury was told that Gregory, of Paddington, west London, had mounted the scheme to import the drugs through the airport in July 1992. Ford was arrested as he ran from the airport where he had been the 'minder', watching over the arrival of the drugs.

Cameron was described as 'the recruiter', seeking out young jobless men in and around Bristol and offering all-expenses paid trips to South America, and telling the would-be couriers initially that they would be smuggling diamonds.

Customs officers, who had been asked to prepare a report on Gregory's financial background, claimed he had made about pounds 1.2m from his drugs activities, but the judge ruled that Gregory's 'benefit' was pounds 313,830. He ordered confiscation of recoverable assets of pounds 138,864, and said there should be an additional three years on his sentence in default of that recovery.

Gregory was deported from Britain in 1989 after serving a two-year sentence for smuggling cannabis. In June 1991, he made a single deposit of pounds 250,000 to open seven Swiss bank accounts.

(Photograph omitted)