Man convicted of £11m plot to smuggle cocaine in bananas

A man from Birmingham who headed a plot to smuggle 139 kilograms of cocaine hidden amongst a shipment of bananas into the UK has been convicted.

Sajid Ali, aged 56, will be sentenced on 16 October following his conviction at Coventry Crown Court in July. Four other members of the group headed by Ali were sentenced at Warwick Crown Court in November last year to a combined 62 years in jail for cocaine importation offences.

The scheme took place in April 2022, when the Class A drugs worth a mammoth £11,120,000 in street value were smuggled into London Gateway Port in a shipping container from Ecuador.

Ali and his four accomplices had then planned to transport the concealed drugs to a storage unit in Herald Way, Coventry. Ali himself, however, distanced himself from the group, preferring to conduct operations via WhatsApp owing to his leading role in the gang.

His last encounter with his team was a meeting with fellow senior conspirators Robert Ball, aged 60, and Mirgent Shahu, aged 33, at a Costa Coffee shop in Birmingham, where they finalised their arrangements.

Ball had communicated with the shipping line, asking them to release the container pivotal to the plot. Fellow recruits Florjan Ibra, aged 31, and Arman Kaviani, aged 38 would then be able to climb on top of it using a forklift and tear the roof off with a crowbar, aiming to unload the cocaine packages concealed within.

Unbeknownst to the group, Border Force officials had discovered the drugs upon the container’s arrival. National Crime Agency (NCA) investigators removed the cocaine and resealed the container, shrewdly putting it under surveillance to reveal its prospective claimants.

Had this load not been intercepted and seized, it would have been worth millions of pounds on the streets of the UK

Paul Orchard, NCA Operations Manager

NCA operatives and police officers then closed in on the unwitting suspects, resulting in their arrest.

Ali was himself taken into custody this January, when he was arrested at Heathrow Airport just before boarding a flight to Istanbul. Although he denied involvement in the 2022 crime at first, he later admitted to owning burner phones for communication with his associates.

NCA Operations Manager Paul Orchard said: “There is no doubt that Sajid Ali pulled the strings for this group, employing Ball and Shahu to oversee the dirty work of extracting what he thought were packages of cocaine from the shipping container.

“Had this load not been intercepted and seized, it would have been worth millions of pounds on the streets of the UK.”

“Cocaine fuels violence and exploitation,” he added, “including gang culture and firearm and knife crime in the UK and around the world.”

In November, Ball and Shahu were each sentenced to 18 years in jail for their role as collaborators. Meanwhile, Ibra was handed a term of 13 years and six months and Kaviani 12 years and nine months.

Sajid Ali will now await his sentencing on 16 October.