Anglesey: £5.5m cocaine haul hidden in orange juice pallets

Cocaine worth £5.5m was hidden in pallets of yoghurt and orange juice as smugglers tried to get it from Great Britain to Ireland, a court heard.

The drugs were discovered when a lorry was stopped at the port of Holyhead on Anglesey on 9 October last year.

In total, 69kg of the Class A drug was found in 1kg blocks.

Three men admitted exporting Class A drugs at Caernarfon Crown Court on Wednesday, and will be sentenced in March.

These were lorry driver Joseph Gray, 52, of Draperstown in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and conspirators Moynul Hoque, 31, of Clapton in London, and Usman Iqbal, 35, of Grays in Essex.

The court heard how Hoque and Iqbal met Gray on 8 October 2020 in Thornbury, near Bristol, to hand over the drugs.

Gray was stopped on 9 October as he was about to travel to Dublin, Ireland, and Hoque and Iqbal were arrested together on 12 December at Channel Tunnel customs controls in Coquelles, France, as they were travelling in a Belgian-registered BMW.

Telecommunications and telematics evidence linked all three men to the Thornbury area at the time of their meeting.

Senior investigating officer Callum Gracey, of the National Crime Agency, said: "These drugs would have put vast sums of money back into the hands of criminals who would have re-invested it into more offending.

"Class A drugs are at the centre of violence and misery which blight some of our communities."