£40m speedboat coke smuggler

1:51pm Thursday 15th May 2008

AN ABERGAVENNY property dealer was found guilty of his part in a plot to smuggle £40 million worth of cocaine in to the UK hidden in a speedboat.

Paul Stromberg, 42, was involved in a mastermind plan to bring a haul of 81% pure cocaine into the country before the plot was foiled by officials who found the drugs in the boat in Venezuela.

Stromberg, who is believed to live in Union Road West, was yesterday convicted at Woolwich Crown Court of conspiracy to commit a drug trafficking offence outside the UK. He had earlier pleaded guilty to possession of the class A drug with intent to supply.

His partner, Leeds-based Paul Clough, 44, had earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a drug trafficking offence outside the UK.

The court heard how the pair travelled to Venezuela where Clough purchased a speedboat, called Samantha, on Margarita Island, with the intention of shipping it by container to Portugal.

However, in February 2006 the authorities examined the boat in a warehouse in Puerto Cabello, from where it was to be shipped to Britain.

There they found 300 blocks of cocaine concealed skilfully within the fibreglass hull of the vessel and in total 337 kilograms of cocaine were beneath the area of the fuel tank.

A date for sentencing has yet to be set.

After the verdict Alison Saunders, director of the Crown Prosecution Service's Organised Crime Division, said: "The charge of conspiracy to commit an offence outside the United Kingdom is rarely used in this country in other than terrorism cases and reflected an innovative approach on the part of the CPS Organised Crime Division to this type of criminality.

"Organised crime knows no borders and we are increasingly working with partners both here and abroad to ensure that we are in a position to tackle it."

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