A group of men have been found guilty of smuggling £4.3million worth of cannabis from Africa to the UK, concealed in bags of gari powder.
On 19 December 2019, a container full of flour arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex from Ghana. Police intercepted the container and replaced the drugs with fake packaging. They then sent a lorry to collect the container.
Daniel Yeboah, 54, Kristofen Baidoo, 48, Kwaku Bonsu, 52, all from London, and Edward Adjei, 48, from Basildon in Essex, were convicted after a three-week trial at Southwark Crown Court.
Baidoo failed to appear at the trial, but was found guilty in absentia. The four men are expected to be sentenced on October 18.
Acting on leads from the NCA and the Ghana Narcotics Control Commission, officers stopped the container in Tilbury and found 2,335 parcels of cannabis plants concealed in white jute bags with gari powder.
The drugs were seized and replaced with fake packaging.
According to the NCA, a lorry was allowed to deliver the container to an industrial estate in north London on January 13, 2020.
Yeboah signed the delivery note with a forged signature and an employee on site removed the seal from the container with an angle grinder.
NCA officers said they saw Bonsu driving around the industrial estate in his car before taking pictures of the container on their mobile phones. Adjei was spotted dropping Baidoo off at the estate.
When they discovered the drugs were missing, an NCA spokesman said “they all fled the premises in separate cars, abandoning the cargo shortly after opening the container”.
‘A bit dubious’
Officers found a 10-ton hydraulic press, often used to compress drugs, at Baidoo’s address. They also seized a number of devices belonging to the men, including mobile phones and dash cams from their vehicles.
Dashcam footage from Adjei’s Toyota picked up his phone conversations with Baidoo and Yeboah shortly after the container arrived at the site.
During a conversation with Yeboah he said: “My brother, be a little vigilant. It’s all a bit dubious.”
The NCA said Yeboah was also apprehended during subsequent calls in which Adjei was told: “I don’t think there is food (drugs) in it” and “there was gari in it, they have removed most of the gari. The people are thieves”.
Saju Sasikumar, senior investigating officer at the NCA, said: “Bringing these damaging criminal groups to justice and dismantling their illegal activities is an important part of the NCA’s mission to protect the public from serious and organised crime.”
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