Two illegal immigrants from Albania found in £400,000 drug farm

Wales Online

2 days ago

Two illegal immigrants from Albania found in £400,000 drug farm
The pair had paid people smugglers to get them into the UK
Inside the former Swansea restaurant
(Image: South Wales Police )
An organised crime group turned a disused restaurant into a commercial-scale cannabis farm, a court has heard. When police raided the building they found 900 cannabis plants and sophisticated growing equipment - along with two Albanian so-called gardeners with a collection of "designer aftershaves".
Swansea Crown Court heard that Albanians Aleksander Cela and Dennis Horeshka had paid people smugglers to get them into the UK and were in debt to those who organised their travel. The identity of the gang running the cannabis farm operation remains unknown.
The court heard that on May 8 this year police executed a search warrant at 12 The Strand in Swansea city centre which had formerly housed a restaurant. As police were going through the door of number 12, two men were seen to exit from the neighbouring property which was a disused bar.
Meanwhile officers inside the former restaurant found hundreds of cannabis plants along with growing equipment, and also found a hole had been knocked through into the neighbouring bar which was also being used to cultivate the drug. Given the find, the two men trying to casually walk away down the street were arrested.
The court heard that police found three floors of the former Meatery and Martini restaurant had been converted into a cannabis-growing operation, with a flat being used as living quarters for "gardeners" tending the harvest which stocked with food and bottles of "designer aftershave".
Aleksander Cela
(Image: South Wales Police )
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In total, officers seized a total of 903 plants worth up to £395,000 across the two premises along with a haul of associated growing equipment. Both defendants remained silent during their interviews. For the latest court reports sign up to our crime newsletter
Aleksander Cela, aged 26, and Dennis Horeshka, aged 30, and both of no fixed abode, had previously pleaded guilty to producing cannabis when they appeared in the dock via prison videolink for sentencing. Neither man has any previous convictions.
Steven Burnell, for Cela, said the defendant had been a painter and decorator in his native Albania and owed money to those who had brought him to the UK illegally. He said they were his instructions that his client had been at The Strand property for some two months watering the plants prior to the police raid, and he said Cela wanted the court to know he regretted his involvement in the operation.
Dennis Horeshka
(Image: South Wales Police )
Andrew Evans, for Horeshka, said the defendant's story was one that would be "all-too-familiar" to the court - namely someone who had entered the UK illegally with the assistance of people traffickers to whom he owed money. He said any money earned by Cela which didn't go the smuggling gang was sent home to his family in Albania, and the advocate said his client also wanted to express his remorse for his involvement.
Judge Huw Rees said it was clear from everything he had read that the defendants were not being held against their will at the Swansea property and had food, phones, money and "relative freedom of movement".
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With a one-third discount for their guilty pleas the defendants were sentenced to 32 months in prison. Defendants ordinarily serve up to half their sentences in custody before being released on licence. Judge Rees said the issue of deportation was a matter for the Home Office.