A drugs smuggler faces a lengthy jail sentence aft

A drugs smuggler faces a lengthy jail sentence after being convicted today (Thurs) of smuggling over half a million ecstasy tablets into Britain.

The pills – each marked with a ‘Euro’ design – were stuffed into lengths of plastic gutter piping and hidden among bundles of dried flowers.

Customs officers swooped in March this year in the heart of Cambridgeshire to arrest ‘organiser’ Hubertus Penders and an unfortunate lorry driver who had unknowingly driven the pnds stlng 5.

6 million of drugs from Belgium via Calais and Dover.

The lorry was searched by customsmen at Stansted Airport and its illicit secret exposed.

Penders was secretly being followed by Customs investigating a money laundering scam – ironically, a jury at London’s Southwark Crown Court cleared the 38-year-old of charges of washing drugs money clean by changing into foreign currency.

He maintained during a two week trial he was changing money on the legitimate orders of his Belgian employers.

Adjourning sentence until February, Judge George Bathurst-Norman said it would be ‘unfair’ to jail a foreign national without learning more about his character.

Penders, of Mol, Belgium, was found guilty smuggling the Class A drug between March 20 and March 23.

However, he was cleared of 15 offences of laundering drugs money between January 12 and March 13, this year, after making trips to a bureau de change in London’s Notting Hill to convert pnds stlng 808,000 into foreign currency.

During the hearing, the court was told how documents seized from the Dutchman revealed three earlier importations of dried flowers organised by the 38-year-old – and their delivery to Wickford and Barking, Essex; and Littleport, Cambridgeshire.

The flowers were collected from a company named Enterdeca, in Merksplace, Belgium, premises rented by Penders and a man named James Thompson, on March 3.

The load consisted of 34 shrink wrapped pallets and were destined for Flora Designs, c/o Alpha Garden Centre, Wickford – its value was stated as pnds stlng 133.

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Prosecutor Noel Lucas told the jury: ‘The Crown invite you to give that careful consideration.

There’s a lorry coming from Belgium to the UK by ferry, bearing a load whose value is the princely sum of pnds stlng 133.

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‘You will have to consider that sum in relation to the cost involved of that lorry coming to the UK.

‘

The dried flowers subsequently arrived at the garden centre.

Penders is alleged to have approached the driver and told him he was not able to unload there and directed him to an address in Grange Road, Willesden, north London.

Penders who had earlier taken a black cab from London to make the rendezvous, then overtaking the lorry in the taxi to get to Willesden ahead of the consignment
– running up a bill of pnds stlng 180, paying the cabbie in cash and adding a pnds stlng 20 tip.

Mr Lucas said after a series of ‘phone calls, Penders ordered the driver to drive up the M11 towards Cambridge.

At the World Famous London Cafe, near Newmarket, Penders made a series of telephone calls and later to men arrived to speak with him.

Mr Lucas said: ‘Penders then told the driver to head back to London because they might not be able to unload that day.

‘However, after a short distance, they were pulled over by police and customs officers and arrested.

‘

The load was searched at Stansted where pallets were opened.

Each contained three bundles of flowers were in each.

‘Each contained four grey plastic gutter tubes with end caps,’ said Mr Lucas.

‘When the caps were taken off, they were found to be full of pills, each marked with a Euro logo.

‘

The 509,480 MDMA tablets weighed 139.

6kg at between 28-30 percent purity – the equivalent of 40.

3kg at 100 percent pure.

‘The value, based on the assumption tablets would sell on the street for pnds stlng 11 each, is pnds stlng 5,604,280,’ said Mr Lucas.

Customs also found pnds stlng 130,000 in cash in Penders’ black holdall – a large number of the notes found to be contaminated with ecstasy.

‘It is the Crown’s submission this man was engaged in drug trafficking, and the money he exchanged at that bureau de change came from drug trafficking,’ said the prosecutor.

Mr Lucas said also seized was ‘important’ paperwork showed three other importations of dried flowers.

+ On December 11, last year, 33 pallets were transported from Belgium to an industrial estate in Ripple Road, Barking.

+ On December 22, a similar load travelled from Belgium to Littleport, Cambs.

+ And on February 13, this year, the same driver arrested with Penders in March – later released without charge, delivered a further load of 33 pallets to the garden centre in Wickford.

‘The Crown submits the evidence in this case shows Penders to be the organiser of this consignment,’ said Mr Lucas.

‘This man was involved in drug smuggling, drug trafficking, and he was carting around enormous wodges of cash.

‘Why was he not working through the normal banking system? The answer is simple, the defendant was avoiding all that.

If he introduced the money to a bank, they would notify the authorities, he would be caught and asked to account for it.

‘

The jury also heard how Penders made 15 trips to the Day Change bureau in Notting Hill Gate using his passport as identity but asking to be called Mr Barry.

There he converted largely pnds stlng 10 and pnds stlng 20 notes into Dutch Guilders.

Mr Lucas said on January 24 this year Penders was under surveillance in the Devonshire Arms pub next door – and twice visiting the bureau de change.

ends