| AMBULANCE |
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Dutchman Leonardus Bijlsma, 55 has been found guilty of bringing drugs worth
about £1.6bn into the United Kingdom using fake ambulances and paramedics, as
well as bogus patients on crutches.
The
police said the man was the right hand man in a gang that smuggled the drugs
across the Channel and delivered it to organized crime groups. The police reportedly
found 193kg of cocaine, 74kg of heroin, 20,000 ecstasy tablets and 2kg of MDMA
crystal worth £38m stash hidden behind panels, in cupboards and under the floor
of one of the ambulance on 16 June.
The
National Crime Agency (NCA) says the ambulances had made at least 45 trips to
the UK in the 14 months before the seizure, with the drugs worth as much as £1.6bn
and the drugs were marked with different coloured tape that matched with a list
of 20 customers found inside the vehicle.
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CCTV clip of one of the drug runs showed one of the ambulances arriving with four
men and a bogus patient on crutches, who was later seen walking around unaided.
The
NCA cracked the audacious plot in June and rounded up the criminals when
Leonardus Bijlsma and Olof Schoon met the drug-laden ambulance being driven by
fake paramedics Dennis Vogelaar and Richard Engelsbel.
The
head of NCA’s Specialist Operations Unit, Rob Lewin the smuggling ring was a
highly specialist drug transportation service. He noted that there will be some
very frustrated high level criminals out there who, given the size of their
orders, will have lost a lot of money.
Two
others, Schoon and Engelsbel, also from the Netherlands, admitted conspiring to
smuggle drugs at an earlier hearing and will be sentenced alongside Bijlsma
next week. However, Dennis Vogelaar, 28, was found not guilty.
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