Yorkshire gang guilty of importing over half a tonne of cocaine

Two drugs smugglers who attempted to import cocaine with a street value of £42 million into the UK on a small boat have been jailed.

National Crime Agency officers arrested Daniel Livingstone, 25, on the morning of 4 May this year with 524 kilos of cocaine in his van outside a hotel in Lelley, East Yorkshire.

He had stayed the night in the hotel with two other men who conspired with him to smuggle the class A drug; Mark Moran, 23, and 40-year-old Colombian national Didier Tordecilla Reyes.

Moran and Reyes had sailed a RHIB (rigid hulled inflatable boat) from the Hessle slipway before returning hours later with the drugs haul and unloading it at a beach near Easington caravan park.

Livingstone was waiting for them and had been seen shining a torch out to sea and talking on his mobile phone before they approached.

NCA officers observed Moran and Reyes ditch the RHIB on the beach after unloading a number of bags into the van.

Earlier in the day Moran, of Ardrishaig, Argyll and Bute, was in Norwich where he drove a hire van and the RHIB up to Grimsby.

There, he met Livingstone, from Campbeltown, Argyll and Bute, and Reyes. The offenders drove on to Hessle and Livingstone stopped to fill two large jerry cans with fuel.

The NCA investigation was supported by Humberside Police, who provided maritime and roads policing assistance, and Border Force who provided maritime advice.