Drugs gang smuggled £450m worth of cocaine hidden in wheels of cheese
They were busted after a West Yorkshire Police operation
Seven members of a drugs network which smuggled 4.5 tonnes of cocaine hidden in wheels of cheese have been jailed, following West Yorkshire Police’s largest ever drugs investigation.
Drugs with a total street value of more than £450 million were taken in shrink-wrapped pallets of cheese to Dover before being supplied throughout the north of England, police said.
On Friday, three of the 18 people convicted for their roles in the conspiracy were jailed at Leeds Crown Court.
Four other defendants were jailed earlier in the week.
A total of 18 people have been convicted of conspiracy to supply cocaine following two trials, which began last year.
Reporting restrictions were in place until the conclusion of both trials.
The investigation started after cocaine and ecstasy worth £2 million was seized in Leeds in 2023, after a car was stopped in East End Park.
It prompted West Yorkshire Police to uncover a sophisticated distribution network.
The investigation team found that an organised crime group had imported 123,568kg of cheese into the UK between December 2022 and April 2023.
The consignments of cheese had been transported as commercial freight into Dover, and then to a legitimate distribution hub in Derby.
Refrigerated trucks collected the shrink-wrapped pallets of cheese and delivered them to industrial units in Huddersfield, Cleckheaton and Halifax in West Yorkshire, and Blackburn, in Lancashire.
Two of the hubs were managed by Aiden McCullagh, and one was run by Saleem Chaudhri.
Ikraam Safdar was shown to have rented a unit at a car wash in South Parade, Halifax, which was also used as part of the operation.
Across these premises, McCullagh, Chaudhri and Craig Asquith would unpackage the blocks of cocaine hidden within the large wheels of cheese and package them in brown cardboard boxes and black bin liners.
Once the drugs were ready for onward supply, a network of couriers from West Yorkshire, Lancashire, the West Midlands, and the North East would descend on the areas around these distribution hubs to collect their supplies.
At Whitacre Industrial Park in Huddersfield and Acorn Business Centre in Cleckheaton, Lewis Ockenden and Umar Farooq were trusted “lieutenants” who would meet the other couriers nearby and take their vehicles from them.
At Yaseen Business Centre in Blackburn, Chaudhri was seen to operate similarly, driving out from the unit to meet couriers nearby and either taking their vehicles into the unit himself to be loaded or taking the drugs to their vehicles to be loaded off site.
In May 2023, officers from Lancashire Police moved in on Chaudhri’s operation in Blackburn and found 217kg of cocaine inside the unit, some still secreted inside large blocks of Gouda cheese.
Each block of cheese was found to contain two “bricks” of cocaine, which had been crudely concealed by hacking a space into each one.
The investigation of Chaudhri showed he had agreed to sell more than 2,000kg for more than £70 million between September 2022 and May 2023.
He was sentenced to 27 years and six months in prison at Preston Crown Court in April 2024.
After the police raid on Chaudhri’s premises police said the distribution network stopped using cheese, and later consignments used chocolate spread and frozen fish mince to hide the drugs.
Craig Goulding was linked by phone contact with some of the others involved in both the West Yorkshire and Lancashire hubs, and messages showed he was paid thousands to dispose of the waste food created. He was shown to have a directing role, moving money between the hubs.
Eight people have already been jailed for their roles in the conspiracy, and a further seven sentenced this week.
McCullagh, Goulding and Asquith were found guilty at trial of conspiracy to supply a Class A drug and sentenced in May this year.
McCullagh, 58, of Brighouse, West Yorkshire, and Goulding, 39, of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, each received 25-year prison sentences.
Asquith, 44, of Wakefield, was jailed for ten years; Farooq, 37, of Halifax, was sentenced to 15 years.
Ockenden, 36, of Wakefield, was jailed for 13 years and four months and Safdar, 44, of Halifax, was sentenced to eight years and nine months.
Driver John Whittell, 43, of Wakefield, was sentenced to 12 years and nine months, and David Jackson, 48, of Manchester, was sentenced to 14 years and four months.
This week Harry Johnson and Darren Johnson, both of Caledine Road, Leicester, were jailed for 16 years and 15 years respectively; Jordan Miles, 32, of Whinchat Close, Coventry, West Midlands, was jailed for 12 years and eight months; and Arran Gowans, 28, of Yarm Road, Darlington, Co Durham, was jailed for five years and 11 months.
On Friday three couriers were jailed for their roles in the conspiracy; Brandon Eley, 31, of Tamworth, Staffordshire, for 10 years; Aaron McNally, 38, of Manchester, for 10 years and nine months; and Antony Etheridge, 70, of no fixed address, for 18 months.
Three other defendants, Mark Briggs, 31, of Norham Avenue, South Shields, Tyne and Wear, Sammy Stapleton, 42, of Peel Hall Road, Manchester, and Nathan Reilly, 26, of Oxton Avenue, Wythenshawe, Manchester, will be sentenced at a later date.
Detective Inspector Kevin Daly, of West Yorkshire Police Protective Services Crime, said: “This was a vast and complex criminal operation involved in distributing huge quantities of cocaine that were being smuggled into the UK, mostly in what appeared to be legitimate consignments of cheese.
“The quantities of the drug involved make it the largest criminal enterprise that we as a Force have taken down, and the success of this operation is testament to the hard work and dedication of the officers involved.
“They spent many months painstakingly building up a complete picture of how the operation worked and who were the key people running it in the UK. It was only by taking the required amount of time to gather a detailed and comprehensive evidential package that we were able to dismantle this distribution network as fully as we could and ensure that those who ran it were caught and held to account.
“We know only too well the damage that drugs do in our communities, where they fuel crime and serious violence, and the negative impact they have on the lives of individual users and their families.
“Those involved in this significant criminal operation were profiting from that misery and we hope it will provide some reassurance to people to see them face the consequences of their actions.
“Tackling serious and organised criminality at this level and complexity presents a significant challenge to law enforcement both locally and internationally, but we will continue to do everything we can alongside our partner agencies to target those involved, disrupt their activities and bring them to justice.”