A man known as Jamie “Iceman” Stevenson has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of smuggling cocaine worth £100m from South America into the UK. Border Force teams intercepted the drug in September 2020 after it was discovered in boxes of bananas, during an investigation codenamed Operation Pepperoni. French police infiltrated an encrypted messaging platform used by Stevenson and a consortium of criminals, leading to the bust.
Stevenson, 59, is from Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire and was regarded as one of Scotland’s top-level organised crime figures. He was described as Scotland’s answer to Tony Soprano, a fictional mafia boss portrayed on the TV series The Sopranos. He is one of 12 most-wanted men in the UK in 2022. In addition to the cocaine, Stevenson planned to import millions of Etizolam pills, also known as street valium, from Kent into Scotland.
Five other men pleaded guilty to charges of drug smuggling and serious organised crime. David Bilsland, a Glasgow fruit merchant, Paul Bowes, Gerard Carbin, Ryan McPhee, and Lloyd Cross were sentenced to six, six, seven, four, and six years, respectively. Lewis Connor, 27, received three years in jail last July. The authorities discovered secret phone messages that allowed the prosecution to demonstrate that Stevenson coordinated the importation of the cocaine.
Stevenson was arrested in Glasgow after the factory in Kent was raided in June 2020. He was released on bail before fleeing the UK for almost two years before being apprehended in the Netherlands. Despite being on the run, the National Crime Agency revealed that he continued to coordinate the smuggling of cocaine into the UK from abroad.
Stevenson’s defence counsel, Thomas Ross KC, said he took full responsibility for his actions and made several bad decisions for which he had no-one to blame but himself. Stevenson admitted his role in supplying Etizolam and smuggling cocaine into the UK to the court in April
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More
