One of UK’s most wanted men jailed over plot to smuggle cocaine ‘worth £100m’ in banana boxes

One of the UK’s most wanted men has been jailed for 20 years after masterminding a plot to smuggle nearly a tonne of cocaine from South America to Scotland hidden in a cargo of bananas.

Jamie Stevenson, known as “Iceman”, pleaded guilty to directing the importation of the drug, which was seized by Border Force teams at Dover in September 2020.

The shipment from Ecuador – which contained 952 blocks of cocaine within 119 foil packages – was addressed to a Glasgow fruit merchant.

The inquiry, named Operation Pepperoni, was led by Police Scotland and the National Crime Agency (NCA) as part of their Organised Crime Partnership (Scotland).

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

The authorities estimated the cocaine’s value at £100m. However a lawyer for one of the defendants in the case said the drugs could have achieved “a value of £76m”.

Stevenson, 59, also pleaded guilty to being involved in organised crime through the production and supply of etizolam, often known as street valium.

He was previously jailed in 2007 for money laundering, with his operation likened to hit 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 probe his criminal activities.

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

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

The banana shipment full of cocaine was then seized three months later while he was on the run.

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

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

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

Co-defendant Paul Bowes, 53, admitted his participation in organised crime by being involved in the production and supply of Class C drug etizolam at a string of premises, including in Abu Dhabi, in London, and in Rochester, Kent.

Bowes was jailed for six years.

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

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

Meanwhile, Lewis Connor, 27, was jailed for three years in July after the investigation found encrypted phone messages that proved he had set fire to properties and vehicles across central Scotland.