Man who tried to smuggle £160m of cocaine to the UK ordered to pay £1
Cocaine smuggler jailed for using luxury yacht to ship £160m of the drug into the UK is ordered to pay back just £1
- Andrew Cole, from Stockton in Teesside, has been ordered to pay back just £1
- Cole was found guilty of trying to smuggle £160m worth of cocaine into the UK
- He had been travelling from the Caribbean to the UK on the luxury yacht, Kahu
A Briton caught on board a luxury yacht attempting to smuggle £160 million worth of cocaine has been ordered by court to pay back £1.
Andrew Cole, from Stockton in Teesside, tried to sneak two tonnes of cocaine onto a yacht, called Kahu, that had been headed to the UK.
The Jamaican-flagged yacht was stopped 80 miles off the coast of Plymouth, just north of Guernsey, on September 9 last year, when the illegal drugs were found.
The crew had left the Barbados in the Caribbean 18 days before being intercepted by specialist officers from Border Force and National Crime Agency.
Andrew Cole (pictured) , from Stockton in Teesside, attempted to smuggle £160 million worth of cocaine aboard a luxury yacht travelling from Barbados to the UK. He was jailed for 18 years in May but has since been ordered to pay back £1 within three months by Plymouth Crown Court
Two tonnes of cocaine were found aboard the 120 foot Kahu that had been sailing from the Caribbean
While the 33-year-old was sentenced to 18 years behind bars at Exeter Crown Court in May, he has since been ordered to pay back £1 within three months by Plymouth Crown Court.
A serious crime prevention order (SCPO) was also put in place for a five year period from his release from custody.
The SCPO aims to protect the public by ‘preventing, restricting or disrupting a person’s involvement in serious crime’.
Border Force and the National Crime Agency stopped the yacht around 80 miles off the coast of Plymouth where they seized 1,500 kilograms of cocaine (pictured)
The operation, which was led by the NCA and supported by Border Force and the Australian Federal Police, saw the Border Force Maritime Command’s 42-metre cutter ‘Searcher’ and 19-metre coastal patrol vessel ‘Alert’ covertly identify and monitor the movements of the yacht.
Cole admitted smuggling the Class A drugs in January, and five other men, the captain, and four crew members, were acquitted by a jury.
The drug trafficking saga that Cole was involved in planning involved him travelling to Costa Rica and Panama in May 2021.
In July he then flew to Miami, and the following day to Barbados, where the yacht arrived on July 29.
Cole had a Samsung mobile phone that he and the crew used to contact others during the yachts journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
Cole admitted smuggling the Class A drugs in January while at Exeter Crown Court. The five other men, the captain, and four crew members, who had been arrested were acquitted by a jury
The phone’s messages showed the Kahu was to rendezvous with another vessel coming from Suriname, in South America, and take on the drugs.
His role on the boat was to ensure a safe receipt, passage and transfer of the cocaine to a crew from the UK, who would take it near the English Channel. He was listed as crew.
On August 28, a message from Cole said: ‘Count is complete. 2000 bits,’ meaning that 2,000 kilos of cocaine had been handed over to the yacht, which was between 60 per cent and 80 per cent pure.
He provided further text updates to one of the organisers under the name of Carlos or Rembrandt – even saying he was looking forward to his return to ‘making you a proud boss’ in another message as he prepared to arrive at UK shores. He added in the message that he and the crew were in good spirits.
Cole made the roughly 4,000-mile journey from Barbados to just north of Guernsey while transporting more than two tons of cocaine
Cole provided accomplices with a drawing to show how the transfer to the offloading crew would happen, and that he would go into the water from the yacht’s swimming platform to help.
After the handover, Cole was planning to leave with the offloading crew and return to the UK while the boat sailed on to Rotterdam.
When he realised a Border Force vessel was tailing them, a text message was sent from the mobile: ‘We are getting boarded’.
The response, which was unread, said: ‘Throw satphones what you use. Throw all phones. Did you copy, throw all phones.’
A failed attempt was made to smash the phone, which provided a running commentary on the drug smuggling operation.
The drug trafficking saga that Cole was involved in planning involved him travelling to Costa Rica and Panama in May 2021. The boat was intercepted by the authorities where they found two tonnes of the drug
Specialist NCA and Border Force officers boarded the yacht, when it was just north of Guernsey, where they found the massive haul of cocaine.
Cole was the only person to be convicted of smuggling the two tonnes of cocaine after five Nicaraguan co-accused were cleared.
Four sailors were acquitted by a jury of trying to bring drugs into the country before the authorities seized the yacht in the English Channel. A similar charge against a fifth defendant, was also dropped.
Boat skipper Billy Downs, aged 50, Denson White-Morales, 35, Edwin Taylor-Morgan, 41, and 42-year-old Ryan Taylor all denied the same charge and spent almost three weeks on trial at Plymouth Crown Court.
They were unanimously found not guilty by a jury.
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