A dad used an international network of criminal contacts in countries such as Colombia, Brazil and Dubai as he flooded the UK with tens of millions of pounds of cocaine and heroin.
Importer Graham Minards, who used the secret pseudonym "Calm Tea" as he traded in more than 1,300kg of class A drugs, is now beginning a lengthy jail term. Described as a "leading player nationally" and being "in the higher echelons" of organised crime, he and his business partner Peter Bradshaw armed themselves with hand grenades and were ready to recruit "lads who blow any c***'s head off" in order to fend off serious threats after falling into large sums of debt.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that the two men organised their "very large scale and sophisticated nationwide drugs supply business" via encrypted communications platform EncroChat. A series of messages from between March and June 2020, recovered when the network was infiltrated by law enforcement authorities, showed that they had been "involved in the purchasing and supply of multi-kilo quantities of drugs on a daily basis" and would also move drugs and cash on behalf of others - "believing they would make millions of pounds" in doing do.
