A drug smuggler tried to hide £22.8m worth of cocaine under dry ice by pretending it was destined for a London hospital.
Bart Verschueren, 40, was caught after a vehicle was stopped at the Coquelles border control in France, with Border Force officers discovering the 285kg of Class A drugs.
To carry out his smuggling, Verschueren had duped an innocent part-time driver who was initially arrested on 5 May 2020, but subsequently released when it was discovered he had no knowledge of the plot.
His paperwork said his consignment of dry ice was for St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, which he invented to avoid checks during the Covid-19 lockdown. The hospital was in no way connected to the dry ice.
Verschueren, of Sint-Katelijne-Waver, a municipality south of Antwerp, was convicted and jailed in Belgium for other drug trafficking offences he committed in 2020 and 2021.
He was subsequently extradited to the UK in August 2024 and charged with smuggling the 285kg of cocaine.
Despite denying the offence, he was convicted by a jury at Canterbury Crown Court in March and was jailed for 18 years on Thursday.
Jurors heard the same vehicle used for the failed smuggling attempt had successfully made it to the UK three times in the preceding weeks. He was therefore sentenced on the basis that he had trafficked at least 500kg of cocaine.
Peter Jones, NCA operations manager, said: “The NCA works at home and abroad to protect the public from the threat of Class A drugs which wreck lives and our communities.
“Bart Verschueren did everything possible to cheat justice. And he thought nothing of risking his driver’s freedom. When he knew his vehicle had been stopped, he reported his driver missing in a bid to distance himself from the importation.”
