One of Britain’s most wanted men is jailed for plotting to smuggle cocaine ‘worth £100 million’ in banana boxes

One of Britain’s most wanted men has been jailed for 20 years after masterminding a plot to smuggle almost a tonne of cocaine from South America to Scotland, hidden in a shipment of bananas.

Jamie Stevenson, known as ‘Iceman’, pleaded guilty to directing the import of the drug, which was seized by Border Force teams in Dover in September 2020.

The shipment from Ecuador – which contained 952 blocks of cocaine in 119 foil wrappers – was addressed to a fruit trader from Glasgow.

The investigation, called Operation Pepperoni, was led by police Scotland and the National Crime Agency (NCA) as part of their Organized Crime Partnership (Scotland).

The investigation was closely linked to Operation Venetic, which saw hundreds of arrests following the infiltration of the encrypted communications platform EncroChat.

Authorities estimate the value of the cocaine at £100 million. However, a lawyer for one of the defendants in the case said this medications could have reached “a value of £76 million”.

Stevenson, 59, also pleaded guilty to involvement in organized crime through the production and supply of etizolam, also known as street Valium.

He was previously jailed in 2007 for money laundering, with his operation compared to the US television series The Sopranos – which revolved around the escapades of mafia boss Tony Soprano.

That prison sentence followed Operation Folklore, an investigation by the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, which used electronic surveillance, undercover officers and forensic accounting to investigate his criminal activities.

The agency’s then director general, Graeme Pearson, told the BBC that Stevenson “has been a very senior figure in organized crime for decades now”, adding: “He ran his business in much the same way as the Sopranos ran their companies.” things as shown on television.”

Following the discovery of a suspected etizolam pill factory in Kent in June 2020, Stevenson, from Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire, fled the country.

The shipment of cocaine-laden bananas was seized three months later while he was on the run.

Police described him as a “dangerous individual” when he appeared on a list of Britain’s most wanted in 2022.

Within weeks of the appeal, he was arrested while jogging in the Netherlands and extradited back to Britain to face justice.

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At the Supreme Court Glasgow in August, Stevenson pleaded guilty to the two charges mid-trial and returned for sentencing on Wednesday.

Co-accused Paul Bowes, 53, admitted his participation in organized crime by being involved in the production and supply of the class C drug etizolam in a series of locations including Abu Dhabi, London and Rochester, Kent.

Bowes was sentenced to six years in prison.

Fruit market trader David Bilsland, 68, Gerard Carbin, 45, Ryan McPhee, 34, and Lloyd Cross, 32, also admitted serious organized crime and drugs offences.

Carbin was sentenced to seven years in prison, both Bilsland and Cross received six years and McPhee received four years in prison.

Meanwhile, Lewis Connor, 27, was jailed for three years in July after the investigation uncovered coded phone messages showing him setting fire to property and vehicles in central Scotland.