A British drugs baron so wealthy he appeared on a Sunday Timesrich list was convicted today of plotting to smuggle over £1 million worth of cannabis into the island of Jersey.
Curtis "Cocky" Warren (46), was once Europe's most wanted man and is believed by police to have amassed a hidden multi-million pound fortune through drug deals.
He was arrested just weeks after his release from a Dutch jail where he had served 10 years of a 17-year sentence for drug trafficking, firearms possession, and subsequently the manslaughter of a fellow inmate.
His trial at Jersey's Royal Court in St Helier was delayed for two years of legal argument over whether jurors should hear surveillance recordings Jersey police had obtained by illegally bugging his car in France.
Appeal Court judges eventually ruled that the recordings should be heard "in the interests of justice".
Warren, originally from Liverpool, was found guilty with five other gang members who had plotted to buy 180kg of cannabis in Amsterdam, drive it through France and then ship it across to Jersey.
The plot was exposed after police kept Warren under constant surveillance after his Dutch jail release in May 2007.
The jury heard one conversation where Warren described the plan as "just a little starter."
His defence lawyer told the court Warren knew he was being bugged and that the recorded conversations had nothing to do with drugs. Instead, he suggested Warren might have been arranging to buy guns to defend himself from rival gangsters or managing the "many, many" millions of pounds he had made from drug dealing.
Warren appeared on the Sunday Timeslist of Britain's most wealthy in 1997, when he was listed as a property developer worth £40 million.
After the verdict, Bill Hughes, director general of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), said Warren was a career criminal for whom prison was a only temporary setback. "He was already planning his next operation from inside prison, and when he was released Soca was waiting, watching, and listening," Mr Hughes said. "When a criminal comes onto Soca's radar, they stay there for life."
Warren will be sentenced later.
Reuters