Men caught with £37m of cocaine in boat off Suffolk coast jailed

Two drug smugglers who were caught with millions of pounds worth of cocaine in an inflatable boat off the Suffolk coast have been jailed.

Bruce Knowles, 56, of Dereham, Norfolk, and Ferhat Gumrukguoglu, 32, from the Netherlands, tried to sneak £37m of cocaine into the UK.

The defendants were arrested by the National Crime Agency (NCA) after being found with the haul near Benacre Broad on 24 June last year.

At Ipswich Crown Court, Judge Richard Benson KC sentenced Knowles to 17 years and three months in prison and Gumrukguoglu to 15 years and said it was “clearly a sophisticated [operation]”.

During the hearing, the court heard how the pair had trialled a “dry run” of the operation in April before attempting the real thing two months later.

But in June, they were confronted close to the shoreline while heading towards Lowestoft by Border Force officers who tried to intercept their rigid-hulled inflatable boat.

Knowles “ignored repeated requests to stop and give up chase” but was captured and arrested by NCA officers.

Gumrukguoglu jumped overboard before swimming to shore and was detained eight hours later after being found wandering around Beccles barefoot.

Upon inspecting the boat, officers discovered 22 packages under a tarpaulin containing 350kg of cocaine, with a high purity rate of 78 to 84%.

Investigators believed the pair had travelled out to sea, where they met a larger ship in waters between England and France, before collecting the drugs.

Knowles and Gumrukguoglu had then planned to transfer the drugs into a van, which had been positioned in Orton Broad, before transporting them to another location ready for distribution.

Alastair Smith, prosecuting, said the defendants had played a “leading role” in the operation and there was “no evidence” they were “acting under the direction of another”.

Defending Knowles, Stephen Spence, however, argued that “common sense dictated there must have been others above them” who were pulling the strings.

“Giving someone £37m of drugs means there is a trust that is not likely to be broken because they know what the outcome would be if they double crossed them,” he added.

“These two people were part of the operational chain but were far from the leading lights of it.”

David Mason, defending Gumrukguoglu, agreed “there were people higher up” but accepted his client had been an “important cog in the wheel”.

He said Gumrukguoglu had taken on the operation because he was trying to “pay off a very significant drug debt” after losing another batch of drugs in the Netherlands.

Judge Benson took the pair’s previous guilty pleas into consideration, but said their “substantial and important” role meant their sentences would be significant.

“If people like you were not prepared to smuggle large quantities of cocaine then cocaine would not be available for addicts in the UK,” he said.