Jail for man who hid cocaine in frozen chicken consignment

Police seized the cocaine Edward Durnion had planned to transport and re-packed the pallet with books instead

A man who hid cocaine with a street value of about £18m in a consignment of frozen chickens has been jailed.

Police said Edward Durnion, 36, of Warwickshire, kept 192kg (423lb) of the drug at a north London business park.

Officers carried out a search after following up on drugs found in November 2022 and discovered the same supplier had delivered the chickens.

At Stafford Crown Court, Durnion was jailed for nine years after admitting conspiring to supply a Class A drug.

West Midlands Police said the search had been carried out on 13 March and cocaine packed in boxes underneath frozen chickens had been found on a pallet.

Det Insp Dave Simpson said it had an estimated wholesale value of £5.5m and a potential street value of £18m.

He described it as "a significant seizure which will have caused considerable disruption to that particular chain of supply".

The police said the drugs would have been worth up to £18m on the street

Police seized the drugs and the pallet was repackaged with books instead.

The force said that the next day Durnion, of Crackley Lane, Kenilworth, had arrived in a van, collected the pallet and driven it to a storage unit in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, where he discovered the drugs were missing.

He was arrested and later charged by the Metropolitan Police.

Durnion was sentenced on Tuesday.

A co-defendant, 49-year-old Alan Brown, from Bedford, was found not guilty at the same court of conspiring to supply cocaine.