A drugs baron who imported up to £1bn of cocaine to the UK died seven years into his 25-year sentence.
Johnny Gerrard Kock, 75, was found dead in his cell at HMP Berwyn in Wales on August 16, 2021. Kock was in prison serving a 25-year sentence after he used a fake pond-liner business to import up to 6,000kg of cocaine - potentially worth up to a billion pounds at street level - from the continent to an Old Swan industrial site.
Kock, a Dutch native living in a semi-detached house in Willow Road, Wavertree, at the time of his arrest, escaped prosecution in both 1992 and in 1994. Kock did not come to the attention of police again until his cocaine operation was busted in 2013, and later made admissions to being involved in cannabis trafficking.
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French customs officers identified 23kg of cocaine hidden in washing powder, destined for an address in Kirkby, while German officers were tipped off to a 103kg consignment. Kock later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to evade the prohibition on the importation of class A drugs and was jailed for 25 years in October 2014.
At Kock's sentencing nine years ago, Judge Mark Brown said: "In terms of the amounts of cocaine, this must be one of the biggest ever offences considered by the courts."
At an inquest held in Ruthin County Hall in Wales today (May 25), senior coroner for north Wales east and central, John Gittins, heard that the 75-year-old's body was found in his isolation cell by two prison officers at 11am, , NorthWalesLive reports.
He had been dead for some time by this point with rigor mortis having already set in. A cause of death of heart failure was provided following a Home Office post-mortem and the coroner concluded it was a death arising from natural causes.
The inquest heard that Kock - who had refused a Covid vaccination along with treatment for his longstanding cardiac issues during his time in prison - had tested positive for Covid-19, but this was not a factor in his death, according to Home Office pathologist Dr Brian Rodgers.
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