After police suspected something fishy was going on with a lorry, they ended up finding £10 million worth of cocaine.
James Satterley, the driver of a frozen fish van, was stopped by Border Force officers as he arrived off the ferry at Newhaven Port, East Sussex, early yesterday morning, November 23.
Among the frozen produce, officers found nearly a 100 packages filled with cocaine.
The 50-year-old has since been charged with importing class A drugs and has been remanded in custody until he appears before Brighton Magistrates’ Court on Monday, November 25.
Inside the lorry, Border Force officers found 97 packages stashed among the frozen fish – with each one containing around a kilogram of cocaine.
According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), the drugs – which were taken away for further analysis following the haul – could have been sold at street level for around £10 million.
An NCA spokesperson told the MailOnline: ‘If cut and sold at street level it is likely the haul would have had a potential value of around £10 million.’
Paul Morris, a NCA senior investigating officer, also told the publication that large hauls like these a key part of the job.
Morris explained:
NCA officers are working alongside Border Force, Sussex Police, Thames Valley Police and the South East regional organised crime unit to investigate this seizure and the circumstances around it.
Working with partners we are determined to do all we can to disrupt the organised crime groups involved in the large-scale importation of class A drugs which fuel serious violence and impact some of the most vulnerable members of our society. Making seizures like this is an important part of that work.
Drug seizures are an essential part of border control. If the police don’t do it, we’ll need to turn to feral hogs, who just recently stole a stash of cocaine worth $22,000 (£17,000) hidden in a forest.
In August this year, Germany came across the single largest haul of cocaine in the country’s history, finding 221 bags full of the stuff in a shipping container – worth a whopping €1,000,000.
In September this year, nearly 1.3 tons of heroin with a street value of more than £120 million were found in Britain’s biggest ever seizure of the drug, hidden among towels and bathrobes.
NCA officers from the MV Gibraltar recovered the narcotics – after receiving a tip-off – from a container ship after it docked at Felixstowe in Suffolk.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.