Flower business used to cover drug smuggling
A wholesale flower business with warehouses in the Midlands was used as a cover to smuggle millions of pounds worth of cannabis into the country, a court has heard.
The drugs conspiracy involved a 'professional and organised' international gang, a court heard.
For more than a year dozens of cardboard boxes containing cannabis, hidden among cartons of fresh flowers, were regularly ferried by lorry between Holland and Shropshire. A jury at Birmingham Crown Court was told yesterday that the estimated profit for the 11-man gang could have been as much as £7 million from the drugs recovered by police alone.
On trial are David Thompson, 42, of Laburnam Avenue, Cannock, Stuart Grant, 42, of Deansfield Road, Bearwood, Ashleigh Watkin, 38, of Loggerheads, near Market Drayton, Gary Davies, 37, of Overdale, Telford, formerly from Market Drayton. All deny being involved in the conspiracy to smuggle cannabis into the UK between November 2011 and February 2013.
Watkin and Davies also deny an allegation of being involved in the supply of cannabis during the same period.
Mr Darron Whitehead, prosecuting, said there was no dispute that there was a criminal conspiracy to smuggle cannabis into the UK.
He said that Baan Flower Trading – co-owned by Baan Klootwijk and David North and run from a warehouse on the Adderley Road Industrial Estate in Market Drayton – was merely a front for the drug smuggling operation.
The jury has been told that North and Klootwijk, along with two other men, have admitted conspiracy to import and to supply cannabis and three other defendants have pleaded guilty to supplying cannabis. All await sentence. The trial continues.
