Drugs kingpin Paul Monk caught organising £60m cocaine sales from luxury Spanish villa jailed

Jailed: Drugs kingpin Paul Monk
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A British drugs kingpin who ran a £60 million cocaine smuggling racket while in hiding at a luxury Spanish villa has been jailed for 18 years.

Paul Monk, 56, spent years shipping huge quantities of cocaine and cannabis from Europe into Britain.

When he was snared in 2015 at his luxury villa in Javier, near Benidorm, Monk was instructing workmen as they lay marble tiles around his swimming pool.

Detectives found accounting notes about the supply of 997 kilos of cocaine with a street value of £59.8 million, as well as an imitation firearm and silencer, 125,000 euros stashed in a plant pot and a fake Slovenian passport.

The high-purity cocaine was smuggled into Britain on the back of lorries from Spain in 2014 and 2015, before being diluted and sold on the streets, the Old Bailey heard.

Swoop: The moment Paul Monk was arrested by police and NCA officers

Monk, who used to live in Hornchurch, in Essex, had fled the UK for Spain in 2013 while on licence from a nine-year sentence for the supply of cannabis.

But Spanish Police said he never left the villa for fear he would be shot dead by rivals or arrested, relying on friends to being him food as he “led the life of an authentic fugitive”.

Jailing him for 18 years, Judge Anuja Dhir QC said Monk was “at the very highest level in the drugs world”.

“I am satisfied that you played a leading role in that conspiracy”, she said.

Police found wads of cash at the luxury villa

Monk was jailed in 2007 for a £3 million cannabis smuggling plot, stashing the drugs in air conditioning units at his business premises in Grays, Essex.

After being released from prison in 2013, Monk fled to Spain where he holed up in his luxury villa, fearing that rival drug dealers wanted him dead, and he never left to avoid the risk of being arrested.

“He got other people to bring him food and other things in the villa where he hid out”, said Spanish Police.

Police obtained a European Arrest Warrant in 2014 and captured the drugs kingpin in April the following year, filming the dramatic arrest as they raided Monk’s Spanish bolthole.

Following his arrest, Monk was quizzed over the gangland murder of drug dealer Francis Brennan, whose body was found washed up on a Costa Blanca beach. However no charges have been brought against him.

Detective Sergeant David Williams, who led Met Police efforts to capture Monk, said: “Monk is a career criminal who showed a disregard for the laws of UK after he fled to Spain in 2013 to escape justice.

“He obtained false identity documents in order to evade authorities while he continued to run an international drug supply network from his home in Spain.”

He said Monk played a “pivotal role” in the drug smuggling network and thanks Spanish police for helping to arrest him.

Monk pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class A drugs and a separate charge of supplying a kilogram of cocaine.

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