A DRUGS gang was dismantled after they were caught smuggling £450million worth of cocaine into the UK inside wheels of cheese.
Seven members were this week jailed after hiding a staggering four and a half tons of the Class A drug and smuggling it into the country.
A total of 18 people have now been convicted of conspiracy to supply the Class A drug following two trials and a major police investigation.
On Friday, three of the conspirators were jailed at Leeds Crown Court with four others put behind bars earlier this week.
The gang hid the drugs in shrink-wrapped pallets of cheese which had been transported as commercial freight into Dover.
West Yorkshire Police launched an investigation after stopping a car in Leeds in January 2023, where £2million worth of cocaine and ecstasy were seized.
It led officers to uncover a “sophisticated distribution network supplying vast amounts of the drug” throughout the north of England.
They found an organised crime group had imported 123,568kg of cheese into the UK between December 2022 and April 2023.
After it was imported into Dover, the cheese would then be sent to a distribution hub in Derby.
Refrigerated trucks would then collect the pallets and deliver them to industrial units in Huddersfield, Cleckheaton, Halifax and Blackburn.
Aiden McCullagh, 58, was revealed to manage two of the hubs while Saleem Chaudhuri ran another.
Ikraam Safdar, 44, was running a unit at a car wash in Halifax which was also used as part of the operation.
Across these premises, McCullagh, with the assistance of Craig Asquith, and Chaudhuri would unpackage the blocks of cocaine hidden within the large wheels of cheese.
They would then be packaged into brown cardboard boxes and black bin liners.
Once the drugs were ready for onward supply, a network of couriers from West Yorkshire, the West Midlands, Lancashire and the North East would descend on the areas around these distribution hubs to collect their supplies.
At Whitacre Industrial Park and Acorn Business Centre, Lewis Ockendon, 36, and 37-year-old Umar Farooq – who were known as “trusted lieutenants” – would meet the other couriers nearby and take their vehicles from them.
They would proceed to drive the vehicles into the industrial units for them to be loaded with the allotted supplies of cocaine before returning the vehicles to the waiting couriers, who would then go on to sell them.
At Yaseen Business Centre, Chaudhuri was seen to operate similarly, driving out from the unit to meet couriers nearby and either taking their vehicles into the unit himself to be loaded or bringing the drugs to their vehicles to be loaded off site.
In May 2023, officers from Lancashire Police raided Chaudhri’s operation in Blackburn and found 217kg of cocaine inside the unit, some still contained in large blocks of gouda cheese.
The investigation into Chaudhri found that he had agreed to sell more than 2,000kg for more than £70m between September 2022 and May 2023.
He was sentenced to 27 years and six months in prison at Preston Crown Court in April 2024.
After the police raid on Chaudhri’s premises, officers said the distribution network stopped using cheese and later used chocolate spread and frozen fish mince to hide the drugs.
Eight people had already been jailed for their roles in the conspiracy, and a further seven were sentenced this week.
McCullagh, Goulding and Asquith were convicted at trial of conspiracy to supply a Class A drug and received their sentences in May this year.
McCullagh, 58, from Brighouse, West Yorkshire, and Goulding, 39, from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, were each handed 25-year prison terms.
Meanwhile, Asquith, 44, from Wakefield, received a ten-year sentence and Farooq, 37, from Halifax, was given 15 years.
Ockenden, 36, from Wakefield, was imprisoned for 13 years and four months, while Safdar, 44, from Halifax, received eight years and nine months.
Driver John Whittell, 43, from Wakefield, was given 12 years and nine months, and David Jackson, 48, from Manchester, received 14 years and four months.
This week Harry Johnson and Darren Johnson, both of Caledine Road, Leicester, were jailed for 16 years and 15 years respectively; and Arran Gowans, 28, of Yarm Road, Darlington, Co Durham, was jailed for five years and 11 months.
On Friday three couriers were jailed for their roles in the conspiracy; Brandon Eley, 31, for 10 years; Aaron McNally, 38, for 10 years and nine months; and Antony Etheridge, 70,for 18 months.
Detective Inspector Kevin Daly, of West Yorkshire Police Protective Services Crime, said: “The quantities of the drug involved make it the largest criminal enterprise that we as a Force have taken down, and the success of this operation is testament to the hard work and dedication of the officers involved.
“They spent many months painstakingly building up a complete picture of how the operation worked and who were the key people running it in the UK. It was only by taking the required amount of time to gather a detailed and comprehensive evidential package that we were able to dismantle this distribution network as fully as we could and ensure that those who ran it were caught and held to account.”