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Guyanese get 15 years for cocaine smuggling in UK
Guyanese Brandon Coates who was involved in a plot to smuggle £22.5 million worth of cocaine in scrap metal into the UK from Guyana, has been jailed for 15 years.
Coates, 34, of Springbank Road, Gildersome, United Kingdom, is the third gang member to be jailed over two days for his role in the plot, which was to arrange the shipping of the massive drug consignment.
Neil Richard Tindling, 35, of Dimsdale Crescent, Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire received 22 years ,while Christopher Foile, 42, of Apple Tree Cottage, Dunmow, Essex, was sentenced to eight years at Chelmsford Crown Court last Thursday.
Brandon Coates
Passing sentence, Judge Christopher Ball QC told Coates: “Your role in this operation was less important, less significant than Tindling – he was someone who was deeply involved in the business of importing and supplying cocaine.”
However, Judge Ball pointed out Coates stood to make a “huge enticement”.
He said Coates had overseen the arrival of the drug containers and had “looked after them” before delivery to a barn at High Easter, near Chelmsford.
Unbeknown to him, however, the containers only contained sand by the time they arrived.
Customs in Holland had, in fact, seized the drugs and replaced them with fine sand before a surveillance operation led to all three men being arrested at the barn where they were attempting to cut open the metal containers.
Tindling and Coates admitted conspiracy to smuggle the drugs between April 1, 2008, and November 4, 2008, while Foile admitted possessing cocaine with intent to supply.
Describing Tindling as a “mid-ranking participant,” Judge Ball said: “This was a huge importation of cocaine – one of small handful of cases where truly significant amounts of cocaine are successfully seized.
“Sentences of those involved with such a massive importation must reflect the evil they are doing with highly addictive substances. Parties were playing for high stakes and, in Tindling’s case, he lost.”
Rupert Gregory, mitigating for Coates, said: “He is a man of very limited intellectual capacity – illiterate and not the type of person who is high in the machinations, a cog in the machine and not the sort of man able to orchestrate complex arrangements.”
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