Two Sandwell Council officers part of drug smuggling plot

Two council housing officers were part of a plot to smuggle cocaine and amphetamine into the UK from Mexico inside a laser-cutting machine.

Sundeep Singh Rai and Billy Hayre collected 30kg (66lbs) of each drug at Greets Green Industrial Estate, West Bromwich, on 8 June 2022.

They were arrested in a sting the next day while taking delivery of another drugs shipment hidden in banana boxes.

The pair were each jailed at Wolverhampton Crown Court for 12 years.

Both initially denied conspiring to supply Class A drugs but changed their pleas before trial and were sentenced on 25 August.

Rai, 37, and accomplice Hayre, 43, worked at Sandwell Council but also belonged to an organised crime group responsible for the drugs being brought into the country by cargo plane, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.

NCA investigators knew about the plot and provided intelligence to Border Force, whose officers seized the drugs when the flight landed at Heathrow Airport on 26 May.

The NCA allowed the empty consignment to run to monitor it and it was later delivered to the industrial estate where Rai, and Hayre, of Hathersage Road, Birmingham, were seen unloading it into a unit.

The next day, they unloaded another drugs shipment from a heavy goods vehicle carrying banana boxes at the estate, where NCA and West Midlands Police officers arrested them.

More than 9kg (20lbs) of of cocaine was found in a box in Rai's car and 2kg (4.5lbs) of methylmethcathinone - known by the street name Meow Meow - was found in the garage of his home in Okehampton Drive, West Bromwich.

At a property he rented in Balfour Crescent, Wolverhampton, officers also found 250g (0.5lbs) of heroin, 700 ecstasy tablets, a cash-counting machine and a dealing list.

NCA operations manager Chris Duplock said: "Rai and Hayre were behind a sophisticated attempt to smuggle class A drugs from Mexico on to the streets of the UK.

"I have no doubt that had we not stopped them, they would have used this route repeatedly to bring in more drugs."

A Proceeds of Crime Order was also made, Wolverhampton Crown Court said.

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