Men, 70, guilty of £5m drugs plot

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/england/london/8255942.stm

Version 0 of 1.

Two 70-year-old men involved in a £5m cannabis smuggling operation have been convicted of drugs offences.

Derek Mercer, of south Norwood, south-east London, and John Rowe, of Bethnal Green, east London, were part of a gang importing cannabis from Holland.

Police found 1.4 tonnes of cannabis in Mercer's warehouse and 60kg of the drug in Rowe's Volvo estate. Both men will be sentenced on Friday.

Three other men previously admitted involvement at Southwark Crown Court.

Mercer and Rowe were convicted of knowingly being concerned in the smuggling of cannabis into the UK.

'Massive quantities'

The gang placed the drugs in a bonded meat warehouse in Bury St Edmonds, Suffolk, before delivering pallets to a haulage and storage company in Grays, Essex.

Andrew Marshall, prosecuting, said evidence of 12 previous smuggling runs had been discovered by investigators.

He said: "Even this importation alone ranks as a major one, but when you look back and see how many have gone in previously you can see really quite massive quantities of cannabis resin have been brought into the country in this way.

"It is really a significant drug smuggling enterprise."

The three men who pleaded guilty will also be sentenced on Friday.

They are: Patrick Maloney, 51, of, Southwark, south-east London; Russ O'Cuneff, 51, of Poplar, east London; and Wattie Soutter, 68, of Rotherhithe, south-east London.