Editor
NCA/PAA infamous gangland prison has admitted masterminding a plot to smuggle almost a tonne of cocaine from South America to Scotland hidden in a cargo of bananas.
Known as ‘Iceman’, Jamie Stevenson has pled responsible to directing the importation of the drug which was seized by Border Force groups at Dover in September 2020.
The seizure, named Operation Pepperoni, concerned the National Crime Agency and Police Scotland. At the time the NCA estimated the cocaine’s worth at £100m.
The packages of cocaine have been hid in containers of bananas from Ecuador, addressed to a fruit retailers in Glasgow.
The operation spanned the UK, Spain, Ecuador and Abu Dhabi.
Stevenson, of Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire, was a number one determine working on the prime degree of organised crime in Scotland.
He was as soon as described as Scotland’s reply to Tony Soprano, the mafia boss portrayed in tv collection The Sopranos.
The 59-year-old was charged with murdering his greatest man and prison affiliate Tony McGovern exterior a Glasgow pub in 2001 – however the case was dropped because of an absence of proof.
Six years later, after being focused by a ground-breaking undercover police inquiry, Stevenson admitted laundering greater than £1m of soiled cash.
He was jailed for 12 years however was again on the streets by 2014.
NCAThe jail time period didn’t curtail Stevenson’s prison profession.
By summer time 2020, he was as soon as once more a needed man after police seized 28 million Etizolam “road Valium” tablets at a capsule manufacturing facility in Kent.
Etizolam has been implicated in a whole bunch of drug deaths in Scotland.
It has been reported that Stevenson was arrested however launched on bail, permitting him to flee the nation. The cocaine seizure at Dover adopted that September.
In 2022, the National Crime Agency named Stevenson in a listing of the UK’s 12 needed males and inside weeks he was again in custody.
A joint operation by the NCA, Police Scotland and Dutch National Police led to his arrest whereas out jogging in Bergen op Zoom after a interval of surveillance.
Stevenson was extradited again to the UK and went on trial this month on the excessive court docket in Glasgow together with six different males.
Evidence started on Monday with Stevenson denying a complete of 14 expenses, however the 59 yr previous has now admitted his position in smuggling cocaine and producing and supplying Etizolam.
Jurors heard it took officers three days to get well cocaine hidden in banana containers that have been despatched from Ecuador.
On Wednesday, two different males Gerard Carbin, 45, and Ryan McPhee, 34, pled responsible to being concerned in critical organised crime and the manufacturing and provide of a category C drug, etizolam.
Fruit service provider David Bisland, 67, Garry McIntyre, 43, and 53-year-old Paul Bowes stay within the dock on the High Court in Glasgow.
Prosecutors listed 14 expenses in a seven web page indictment of accusations which span from January to September 2020.
