Boat transport Chichester news - Sussex and Hampshire smugglers sentenced
Illegal drug smugglers are going to think twice before arranging boat transport to Chichester after police announced details of a £50 million drugs sting off the coast of the West Sussex city.
Police arranged their own boat transport to the Chichester area so that they could track a fishing boat being used by smugglers to pick up 11 watertight holdalls containing around 255 kilograms of cocaine which had been dropped off by a container ship en route from Brazil to Antwerp.
A spokesperson with the Serious Organised Crime Agency said that the twenty-plus-years sentences handed out to the smugglers would serve as a warning, "These men believed their meticulously-planned drugs run would look like a commercial fishing expedition," he said.
Adding, "Rather than bringing them massive profits, however, their plan has put them in the same unenviable position as many others who have been caught attempting to traffic drugs under the guise of legitimate business."
Of the men who were trying to transport the cocaine by boat, one was from Chichester, two were from Hampshire, one was from the Isle of Wight another was from Croatia.
