A man from Lewisham has been jailed for 15 years after a Columbian drugs cartel imported millions of pounds worth of cocaine into the UK in banana boxes.

During sentencing on March 30, Southwark Crown Court heard that police arrested 24-year-old Daniel Valdes Jaramillo of Hillbeck Close, Oscar Grisales-Cuervo, 43 from Finchley and Leonel Hernandez-Gonzalez, 37, from Hounslow after boxes of bananas from Colombia arrived at Dover in July last year.

Police stormed a warehouse at the Oast Park Trading Estate in Hartlip, Kent on July 10 and found 105kg of cocaine compressed and packed in plastic bananas concealed within the fruit.

TOP STORIES:

The drugs are believed to have a wholesale value of £6.4m, with an estimated street value of around £24m.

Analysis of the cocaine found it to be of 98 per cent purity.

Officers also seized £290,000 of cash which was linked to Hernandez-Gonzalez.

Jaramillo was jailed for 15 years after pleading guilty conspiracy to import of cocaine at an earlier hearing.

Grisales-Cuervo and Hernandez-Gonzalez were both jailed for 22 years for conspiracy to import of cocaine after being found guilty following a trial at the same court on 13 March.

Detective Inspector Paul Foreman from the Special Projects Team said: "These individuals were part of a sophisticated, well-organised and determined criminal network capable of masterminding and resourcing this complicated international smuggling operation and sustaining it over a long period."