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Two men have been jailed after being caught smuggling half a tonne of cocaine into the UK on a small boat.
Mark Moran and Daniel Livingstone were sentenced this week to a combined total of nearly 23 years in prison, after 524kg of cocaine were found on 4 May in a hire van outside a hotel where they had stayed in Lelley, East Yorkshire, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
Moran and Colombian national Didier Tordecilla Reyes had sailed a rigid-hulled inflatable boat from the Hessle slipway, near Hull, before returning hours later with the drugs – said by the NCA to have a street value of £42m – and unloading them at a beach 20 miles along the coast, near Easington caravan park.
Livingstone, aged 25, had been spotted shining a torch out to sea and talking on his mobile phone as he waited for Moran and Reyes, who were seen unloading a number of bags into the van and ditching the boat on the beach.
Earlier that day, Moran had driven a hire van and the boat from Norwich to Grimsby where he met Livingstone and Reyes. They all drove on to Hessle and Livingstone filled two large jerry cans with fuel.
But officers discovered the illict cargo in Livingstone’s van when they arrested him on 4 May after he spent the night at a hotel in nearby Lelley along with Moran and Reyes.
On Monday, Moran – a 23-year-old from Ardrishaig in Argyll and Bute – was sentenced at Hull Crown Court on Monday to 15 years in jail for conspiracy to import cocaine, after being convicted by a jury in October following an eight-day trial.
Livingstone, who had pleaded guilty in June to the same offence, was sentenced to seven years and nine months.
Reyes, aged 40, who also pleaded guilty in July to a charge of conspiracy to import cocaine, is to be sentenced at a later date, the NCA said.
A fourth defendant, also from Argyll and Bute, was cleared by the jury.
After sentencing, NCA senior investigating officer Alan French said: “There’s no doubt these drugs would have been sold into communities around the UK, but working with our partners including Humberside Police and Border Force, we have disrupted this crime group’s offending and made a huge dent in any profits they were due to make.
“We are determined to do all we can to tackle the class A drugs threat activity, and protect the public from the horrific damage it causes our society.”
Earlier this year, the NCA and Border Force seized a haul of 5.7 tonnes of cocaine, in what they said was believed to be the largest ever seizure of class A drugs in the UK.
Yet the domestic cocaine market is dominated by criminal gangs who the NCA believe to be making around £4bn a year in the UK alone.
In 2020, a landmark Home Office-commissioned review warned that the illicit drugs trade has “never caused greater harm to society” in Britain, with police efforts not only failing to stem supply but often fuelling increased violence in a market which had grown to involve an “unprecedented” number of children.
Additional reporting by PA
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