How a high-speed ocean chase led to an £18m cocaine seizure in Cornwall

The Guardian

3 days ago

To the surfers and dog walkers on the Cornish beach it must have looked like a scene from a crime thriller. An ocean chase ending with two boats crunching aground on the sand, a stumbling attempt by three men to escape into the dunes, dramatic arrests and the discovery of millions of pounds of cocaine.
For the investigators it was the start of a painstaking investigation that has shone a unique light into a tactic used by South American drug gangs and British organised crime groups known as at-sea drop-offs or Asdos, in which bales of cocaine fitted with GPS trackers are dumped at sea from a transatlantic 'mother' ships to be picked up by small vessels and smuggled into the UK via quiet coves and harbours.
What made Operation Libellary particularly satisfying for the investigators is that they caught people involved in a number of different aspects of the crime – including a Hampshire fisher fallen on hard times who was recruited for his seafaring ability, a Colombian enforcer there to make sure the pickup went smoothly, and members of an 'Essex crime group' believed to be part of the gang that had bought the consignment and would have sold it on the streets of south-east England.
Barry Vinall of the National Crime Agency (NCA), who was the senior investigating officer, said the seven men caught and convicted of conspiracy to import class A drugs were pivotal figures. 'You've got organisers, logistics, security, customers,' he said.
It began with a lucky break for the law enforcement agencies. The UK Border Force cutter HMC Valiant was patrolling off the coast of Cornwall on 13 September last year when officers noticed a rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) on the horizon. They knew there was a 'mother ship' in the area so went to take a look and the RHIB sped off.
For 28 miles the three men in the RHIB stayed ahead of the Border Force boat, tipping overboard packages of what turned out to be cocaine.
The chase ended on Gwynver beach near Land's End, when the three – Peter Williams, 44, Scott Johnston, 38, and Edwin Yahir Tabora Baca, 33 – were arrested. A Garmin chart plotter and knives were found. The men had ditched 11 bales of cocaine into the water. Border Force officials recovered six of them, worth about £18m.
A team of NCA officers was dispatched from London to Cornwall. 'We deployed fast time,' said Vinall. 'It was all hands to the pump. We needed to gather as much information of what they'd been up to and who they were.'
They found out that Williams was a fisher by trade. He is a familiar figure at Emsworth harbour in Hampshire, where he ran a fishing outfit and fishmonger's called Fresh from the Boat. It supplied hotels, pubs and hotels and sold fish from its own shop, winning a number of small business awards.
But Williams had endured a torrid few years. In February 2022, his boat, Tia Maria, was wrecked in Storm Eunice. 'We are feeling pretty broken and it's hard to keep it all together,' Fresh from the Boat wrote on its website.
Local people rallied and organised a crowd-funder to help Williams buy a new boat, Brenda C, but he also had to put his own money into the business and the financial pressure was taking a toll.
NCA officers examined CCTV from the harbour showing that over the months there had been a number of suspicious-looking meetings between Williams and others. 'That started us looking at a wider network that was involved,' said Vinall.
Tabora Baca is from Barcelona and initially came up with an unlikely story, saying he was a tourist who had accepted an invitation from two strangers to go fishing.
His phone told a different tale. Officers found messages from his boss telling him he would be going to sea with Williams and Johnston, another Hampshire man, to scoop up packages of cocaine dropped by a ship.
Vinall said: 'These ships come through and dump a load and then multiple organised crime groups come out a bit like the seagulls following the fishing trawlers, to collect the drugs.' Tabora Baca was believed to be acting as security, perhaps for a cartel, to make sure each customer took the share they were due.
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The NCA also began to focus on three Essex men with a hired white van who were heading to Cornwall as the RHIB was speeding out to pick up the drugs – Bobbie Pearce, 29, Michael May, 47, and Terry Willis, 44. The NCA believes these men were there to take the cocaine back to the east of England to be sold on the streets of Essex and London.
After the RHIB was spotted and the chase began, Johnston phoned Willis from the boat, presumably telling him it had all gone wrong, before dumping his phone in the sea. The three Essex men immediately left the area in a white van and a BMW.
Another vital clue was a sticker on the RHIB from a marine company in north Wales. The NCA contacted the company and found it had been bought by Alex Fowlie, 35, from West Sussex, for £70,000 a few months earlier. He is the seventh man involved and seen as a key facilitator.
Fowlie was so confident that he would not be found that while the Asdo was in progress, he was enjoying a mini-break with his partner close by – in the north Cornwall surfing town of Newquay. 'It was a strange place to go when there's a drug importation coming in,' said Vinall. 'But he was there posting pictures all over Facebook.'
Losing some product and some smugglers is an occupational hazard. Three days after the Gwynver Beach chase – at which point he thought he was in the clear – Fowlie was arranging another Asdo pickup.
'We're good to get a team ready,' he told an accomplice in a message the NCA found. 'We just need the fisherman and one of us go out with him and they send one of their lads to keep an eye on things.
'You've got your radars. If you see anything coming towards you, just drop it back in. It's got its GPS and then we come out with the RHIBs and grab it after. It's zero fucking risk.'
Not quite. Tabora Baca, Johnston, Willis and May were given hefty sentences for conspiracy to import class A drugs on Friday 1 August. The rest are being sentenced for the same offence on Thursday 21 August.