Fishing boat cocaine smugglers guilty

Four men arrested at sea as they tried to smuggle cocaine with an estimated street value of about £100m into the UK on a fishing boat have been convicted.

The men were found with more than a tonne of the drug on board the Lily Lola, off the coast of Newquay, Cornwall, in September last year.

Michael Kelly and Jake Marchant pleaded guilty before trial, with a jury also finding Jon Williams and Patrick Godfrey guilty at Truro Crown Court on Wednesday.

All four were convicted of conspiring to smuggle a tonne of cocaine.

Prosecutor Frederick Hookway told the court the fishing boat was intercepted shortly after 14:00 BST on 13 September by a Border Force vessel with Williams at the helm, Marchant next to him, Kelly in the accommodation area and Godrey asleep in a chair on the deck.

Mr Hookway said searches revealed blocks and bales of drugs stashed all over the vessel, which had been bought by Williams a few months earlier from a man in Ramsgate, Kent, for £116,000.

Kelly, 45, of Portway, Manchester; Marchant, 26, of no fixed abode; Williams, 45, of St Thomas, Swansea; and Godfrey, 31, of Port Tennant, Swansea, are due to return to court on 8 May to be sentenced.

Judge James Adkin told them: "You should expect long custodial sentences."

National Crime Agency branch commander Derek Evans said the operation had "prevented a huge haul of cocaine from hitting the streets of the UK and wider Europe.

He said it "would have blighted countless lives and communities".

He added the drug supply chain had been "disrupted" and law enforcement had "ensured organised criminals are deprived of the significant profits they would have gained had these drugs made it into the country."

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