Police have smashed an Accrington-based £30m gun and drugs gang which masqueraded as a flower wholesaler.
Seven men, including the gang’s Dutch mastermind, were today handed lengthy jail sentences.
The gang smuggled huge quantities of cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, amphetamine and cannabis worth more than £30m as well as guns into the country.
The contraband was brought across the Channel hidden in lorries and transported north to a depot in Accrington where the gang operated a bogus flower wholesale business to mask their real trade in drugs.
From there, the drugs were distributed throughout the country including Greater Manchester.
But their criminal enterprise began to unravel when UK Border Force officials found a pistol and a sub-machine gun with a silencer and laser sight as well as 28 rounds of ammunition amid a huge consignment of drugs hidden in a lorry which was stopped at the French side of the Channel Tunnel in March, 2014.
They also seized 600 kilos of cannabis resin and skunk, 60 kilos of amphetamine, 50 litres of liquid amphetamine, six kilos of cocaine and one kilo of ecstasy.
Two weeks later officials stopped another lorry and found almost a tonne of cannabis, amphetamine, heroin and cocaine.
They found 300 kilos of ecstasy and 45 kilos of ecstasy when they stopped a third lorry four months later.
Investigators established that the drugs were bound for Albion Mill, a warehouse in Accrington.
More than 200 kilos of cannabis was seized from the mill along with notebooks containing details of customers and quantities of drugs to supply. A further 80 kilos of cannabis was recovered from a van outside.
Working with colleagues in the Netherlands, National Crime Agency investigators linked all the importations to Dutch mastermind Mohammed Imran Bhegan and found that they had been involved in another 13 separate runs from the continent to the UK.
Bhegani had made all the arrangements, getting consignments delivered to premises in Albion Mill.
Bhegani, 39, of Arnhem, Netherlands, was jailed for 36 years at Preston Crown Court.
Four fellow gang members who were found in the Accrington depot were also jailed: Sajid Osman, 44, of Bromley Street, Blackburn, who rented the Accrington premises, was jailed for 26 years; Nizami Esshak, 56, of Willows Lane, Accrington, was handed seven years behind bars - Bhegani was found in Esshak’s house; Taimur Zahid, 28, of Egerton Road South, Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, was sentenced to two years and three months in prison; Hussain Farooq, 27 of Fox Street, Stockport, was given two years behind bars. Zahid and Farooq were ‘customers’ picking up drugs from the unit, Investigators found three boxes containing flowers and twelve kilos of cannabis in their car.
One of the truck drivers, Nigel Watson, 52, of Clunbury Road, Telford, Shropshire, was handed 17 years in prison.
Another lorry driver, Benny Albert Planken, 29, of Streefkerk, Netherlands, who had imported the drugs found in Accrington, was jailed for 11 years.
Esshak, Zahid and Farooq all pleaded guilty prior to trial, but Bhegani, Osman, Watson and Planken were found guilty of conspiring to import drugs by a jury.
'Bhegani was an international drug dealer with high-level contacts in mainland Europe'
NCA regional head of investigations, Greg McKenna, said: “In terms of organised crime Mohammed Imran Bhegani was right at the top of the tree. He was an international drug dealer with high-level contacts in mainland Europe. Bhegani had the ability to transport vast quantities of illegal drugs and weapons from the continent and into the UK.
“Osman and Esshak were his trusted associates, charged with overseeing the UK end of the operation, taking delivery of the consignments and arranging the onward distribution.
“To operate on such a commercial scale the group needed the professional skills of hauliers like Watson and Planken, among others, to bring in their illicit cargo. As one was arrested, another would be brought in to take their place.
“As this criminal network was an international one, so too was our investigation, and we have received invaluable assistance from our colleagues in the Dutch National Crime Squad and from Border Force here in the UK.
“Working together we are determined to disrupt and bring to justice organised criminal groups involved in this type of smuggling.”
