Drug bust at the ‘gilded cage’ of £60m coke king

One of Britain’s top cocaine dealers has been jailed for 18 years after he was caught organising the supply of drugs worth £60 million from a luxury villa in Spain.

Paul Monk, 56, has spent the last 20 years shipping huge quantities of cannabis and cocaine into Britain from the continent.

He was arrested by armed police at his luxury villa in Javier, near Benidorm as Monk instructed workers laying marble tiles around his vast swimming pool.

At the mountain hide-out, police found accounting notes about the supply of 997 kilos of cocaine which would have a street value of £59,820,000, the Old Bailey heard.

Watering down the high-quality cocaine with cutting agents could almost double its value.

Police also recovered an imitation firearm with a silencer, 125,000 euros in a plant pot and a fake Slovenian passport for Monk under an assumed name.

At the time of the raid in 2015, Monk was on licence from a nine-year sentence for the supply of cannabis.

‘He is a sophisticated career criminal who has been involved in drug trafficking in this country and overseas for many years,’ said prosecutor Tom Wilkins.

‘He was organising the supply of cocaine into Britain in very large quantities indeed.’

Monk was bringing the drugs into Britain from Spain on goods lorries which were carrying 110 kilos of top quality cocaine a time.

When he was arrested he claimed he was only involved in smuggling tobacco into Britain.

Monk was also questioned about the gangland murder of drug dealer Francis Brennan, whose badly decomposed body washed up on a Costa Blanca beach, but he was never charged.

Spanish police said the luxury villa had become a gilded cage for Monk, who was terrified to leave home for fear of being gunned down by a rival dealer.

A Guardia Civil spokesman said: ‘He never left his house as a security measure to avoid being arrested.

‘He got other people to bring him food and other things in the villa where he hid out, leading the life of an authentic fugitive.’

In 2007, Monk was jailed for arranging three million pounds worth of cannabis to be smuggled into the UK.

He secreted some of the drugs in air conditioning units at his business premises in Grays, Essex.

Snaresbrook Crown Court heard Monk was behind two importations of weed, weighing nearly a metric tonne, in early 2005.

Customs had seized some 338 kilos of the class C drug, worth about £1 million alone, on April 11 2005 after stopping the lorry packed with dehumidifiers from Spain.

The lorry was supposed to be bound for a company called Theydon Hall Ltd, but the prosecution maintained it was merely a front for the drug smuggling operation.

Police later found £75,000 in cash inside a shrink-wrapped dehumidifier and found more cannabis inside the air conditioning units at the business premises in Askew Farm Lane.

Monk, whose last home in the UK was at Nelmes Close, Hornchurch, Essex, was convicted of conspiracy to supply cannabis on or before 11 April 2005.

He admitted conspiracy to smuggle cocaine in relation to his Spanish arrest.

He also admitted conspiracy to supply cocaine in 2013, for which Babatunde Arogundade, Fred Jones-Lartey and Nicole Douglas were convicted at Kingston Crown Court in 2015, while Monk was in Spain.

Arogundade was sentenced to 27 for conspiracy to supply and firearms charges, while Jones-Lartey and Douglas were sentenced to 12 and four years respectively.

Rupert Pardoe, defending, said Monk had been a ‘good father’ to two children, now young adults, who ‘both suffer from profound, almost complete, deafness.’

Since his arrest almost two years ago Monk had suffered from stress as a result of not knowing his fate.

‘The fight has gone rather out of out him. He has spent now well in excess of a year in custody in Category A conditions not knowing any finite date.

‘The best mitigation is that he has not troubled the court with a trial.

‘I ask the court in the circumstances of this case to extend a hand of mercy. He is not in the first flush of youth. He has wasted nobody’s time.’

Mr Pardoe asked the court to ‘arrive at a sentence to be imposed which starts with the figure one.’

Judge Anuha Dhir QC told Monk: ‘I am satisfied that you played a leading role in that conspiracy.

‘The purity of the cocaine you supplied, your lifestyle and the items found on your arrest in Spain go to proving that.’

Judge Dhir noted Monk was also in breach of his licence by travelling to Spain 2013.

‘When you were arrested, the luxury villa you were living in was searched and documents were found, which indicated further and more sophisticated involvement in drugs.

[The Crown] say you are at the very highest level in the drugs world and the material I have seen supports that.’

She added that a late change to the indictment, from 55kg to 997kg, did not make a ‘significant difference’ to sentencing because of his long history of criminality.

Monk stood impassively in a grey tracksuit as he was sentenced to four years for supply and 18 years for smuggling to run concurrently.

The imposition of a serious crime prevention order and the start of confiscation proceedings were adjourned until January 2018.

DS David Williams, DI Simon Mearns and DC Christopher Green from the Metropolitan Police, along with Annie Gooch from the NCA, were all commended by the judge for their ‘hard work and professionalism.’

Three Spanish police officers were also commended for their work on the case.
ends