www.loans4homeowners.co.uk A man responsible for the "most significant global drugs trafficking network known to target the UK" has been jailed for 30 years.

Brian Brendon Wright, known as 'The Milkman', was convicted yesterday of conspiracy to supply drugs and conspiracy to evade the prohibition and importation of a controlled drug at Woolwich crown court.

And today, Judge Peter Moss handed down two 30-year sentences to run concurrently for the crimes, telling the 60-year-old he was aware that he "may not live that long".

A well-known face at racecourses throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Wright was a famed gambler, but was banned from all race meetings after it emerged he was tapping up jockeys for information.

The verdict marks the end of an 11-year customs investigation which has seen 19 others, receiving between two-and-a-half and 30 years, convicted for their role in the cocaine smuggling operation.

Wright headed a criminal network, overseeing the smuggling of at least three tonnes of cocaine into the UK, whose activities were only discovered when a converted fishing trawler carrying 599kg of the class A drug arrived in Cork in the Republic of Ireland rather than its intended destination on the south coast of England.

During months of covert surveillance customs officers discovered that the gang transported the cocaine in private yachts rendezvousing with British yachts while at sea, transferring up to 600kg of cocaine on each trip.

"UK customs investigators, working hand-in-hand with their counterparts in the United States, have dismantled probably the most sophisticated and successful global cocaine trafficking organisation ever to target the UK," he said.

"This has resulted in successful prosecutions at all levels of the conspiracy, from the Colombian suppliers, to the transporters, to the members of the UK distribution network and ultimately brought the head of that network, Brian Brendon Wright, to justice."

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