Two haulage bosses in drug import trial
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• Eleven men, including the owners of two haulage firms, have gone on trial accused of organising a £16m drug smuggling operation.
Last week Robert Taylor, owner of Sandwichbased haulier Robert International, and Andrew Howard, proprietor of transport firm RKD, along with two drivers, Jeffrey Garforth and Martin Knight, appeared at Maidstone Crown Court, With seven others they are charged with being part of a gang that masterminded the import of ecstasy, cocaine, speed, cannabis resIn and herbal cannabis. The drugs were imported through Dover hidden inside two trucks driven by Garforth and another driver, Martin Knight, over a period of two months.
Douglas Day, QC, prosecuting, said some months before the importations on December 12 1997 and February 24 last year, Garforth, along with two other men, Derek Holness and Kevin Howard, were caught trying to take 2304,000 in cash out of the country through Dover.
They were stopped in a car at the docks in May 1997 and the cash was seized from the boot by customs officers. The money was forfeited after an application to Dover magistrates.
"The prosecution invites you to draw the irresistible inference that the money and the circumstances in which it was being taken out of the country lead you to the conclusion that it was being used for the purpose of drug -running," Day told the jury. It was drug smuggling, he said, "on a huge and professional scale".
All11 deny the charges and the trial is expected to last three months.