Trio jailed for £26m drug haul found on speedboat

(From left) Anestis Tsepa, Raymond Nuttall and Craig Nuttall collected drugs dropped from a cargo ship

Three men who tried to smuggle cocaine worth £26.5m into the UK after it was dropped from a cargo ship off the coast of Somerset have been jailed.

Craig Nuttall, 51, his brother Raymond Nuttall, 47, both from Preston, and Greek national Anestis Tsepa, 24, from Thessaloniki, were arrested on the slipway of Watchet Marina in late July.

The Nuttalls and Tsepa pleaded guilty to importing cocaine at Taunton Crown Court at hearings held in August and September, and were jailed at the same court on Thursday.

Tsepa was given a 16-year jail term, while Raymond and Craig were sentenced to 11-years-and-three-months and 11-years-and-two-months respectively.

Fourteen packages of cocaine were stashed between the speedboat's seats

The defendants, alongside 38-year-old Albanian national Melios Delvina, had 14 packages of cocaine weighting 322kg stashed on the floor and between the seats of their speedboat.

Delvina has also admitted the same charge and is due to be sentenced on 11 December.

The National Crime Agency (NCA), which led the investigation, said the Nattalls had arrived at Watchet Marina on 23 July with their boat, named Guzzla, and told the marina manager they were in the area for a few days to fish.

On the evening of 30 July they were joined by Tsepa and Delvina, and by 20.46 BST Craig Nuttall, Tsepa and Delvina were heading out to sea, the NCA said.

They returned to the marina at 01:00 BST and were in the process of trying to connect the boat to a trailer that Raymond had driven down the slipway when they were arrested by NCA officers.

The cocaine was found to be 89% purity and had a street value of £26.5m, while a handgun was also found on the vessel, the NCA said.

Gavin Webb, NCA regional head of investigations, said: "[The defendants] were fuelled by greed – if their attempt had been successful it would have netted them millions of pounds in profit.

"The presence of a firearm in the boat shows the levels they were willing to go to with their offending."

The defendants carried a handgun when collecting the drugs

"Someone will arrange for the [drugs] to be put overboard - wrapped in life jackets and with a beacon tracker of some kind - and that then will be passed in terms of co-ordinates and details to an organised crime group based here, who will go out and collect it," Mr Webb said.

"There will be some degree of complicity from those on the larger vessels, but we're not suggesting that the whole vessel is a criminal enterprise.

"We look into that very seriously and look upstream and into the organisations themselves to try and identify those individuals," he said.

The men were arrested in Watchet on the coast of Somerset

The investigation was conducted in partnership with Border Force, the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit, Avon and Somerset Police and Devon and Cornwall Police.

Mr Webb said while the seizure of the drugs marked a huge success for the agencies involved, criminal gangs are coming up with increasingly innovative ways to get drugs into the country.

"Very sadly access to Class A drugs is relatively easy for some areas and some communities and some individuals, and that's a real challenge for us," he said.

Mr Webb said between September 2024 and June 2005 the NCA and its partners seized about a quarter of a billion pounds worth of cocaine, and production was increasing in regions like South America.

"We've got to be really agile in terms of how we face that threat," he said.

"While this is a substantial importation attempt that we've prosecuted individuals for today, it's still up against a massive amount potentially coming in."