Crime boss to appeal jail term for £100m banana box cocaine plot

A gangster who orchestrated a plot to smuggle cocaine worth £100m from South America in boxes of bananas is to appeal his 20 year sentence.

Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson admitted directing the importation of the drug, which was seized by Border Force teams at Dover in September 2020.

The other members of his gang were last week jailed for a total of 29 years at the High Court in Glasgow.

The plot was uncovered after an encrypted messaging platform used by criminals was infiltrated by French police.

Stevenson had also planned to flood Scotland with millions of Etizolam tablets, also known as street valium, from a factory in Kent.

The 59-year-old, from Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire, was a leading figure at the top level of organised crime in Scotland.

He was once described as Scotland’s answer to Tony Soprano, the mafia boss portrayed in television series The Sopranos.

And in 2022, he featured on a National Crime Agency (NCA) list of the UK’s 12 most wanted men.

Last month Stevenson admitted his role in producing and supplying Etizolam and smuggling a tonne of cocaine - which police estimated would have been worth £100m on the streets – into the UK.

Five other men - David Bilsland, 68; Paul Bowes, 53; Gerard Carbin, 45; Ryan McPhee, 34; and Lloyd Cross, 32 - also pled guilty to serious organised crime and drug offences.

Carbin was jailed for seven years; Bilsland, Bowes and Cross were each jailed for six years; and McPhee was jailed for four years.

Lewis Connor, 27, was jailed for three years in July after the investigation found encrypted phone messages which proved he had set fire to properties and vehicles across Central Scotland.

The Court of Appeal in Edinburgh confirmed Stevenson was now contesting the jail-term imposed by judge Lord Ericht.

An appeal against the sentence has been lodged by his legal team but no court date has been set.

The drugs operation, which spanned the UK, Spain, Ecuador and Abu Dhabi, had been targeted by police in an inquiry which was named Operation Pepperoni.

Officers had been investigating reports that Bilsland, a Glasgow fruit merchant, had links with organised crime. He was then seen meeting Stevenson in a hotel in Spain.

At about the same time, officers had learned that Stevenson was involved in setting up a factory in Kent which was producing millions of Etizolam tablets.

The factory was raided in June 2020 and Stevenson was arrested in Glasgow.

He was taken to England by police before being released on bail.

Stevenson then fled the UK, spending almost two years on the run before being arrested while jogging in the Netherlands.

The NCA said Stevenson continued to direct the importation of cocaine into the UK from abroad.

After his conviction, deputy crown agent Kenny Donnelly said Stevenson and his associates were involved in drug trafficking "on an industrial and global scale".

He said the encrypted messages had shown that Stevenson was the ringleader who directed the others.

The judge, Lord Ericht, told Stevenson that he had directed "a complex operation" for the importing and supplying cocaine and played "a leading role" in manufacturing and distributing etizolam tablets.