A lorry driver has been jailed for smuggling more than £7 million worth of cocaine by hiding it in a vehicle carrying a consignment of Kim Kardashian’s Skims underwear and clothing, Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said in a statement.
Polish national Jakub Jan Konkel, 40, was sentenced to 13 years and six months in prison at Chelmsford Crown Court on Monday following an investigation by the National Crime Agency, the agency said.
“On September 5 last year Konkel was stopped by Border Force officers at the port of Harwich in Essex as he arrived on a ferry from the Hook of Holland in the Netherlands,” it said.
Their heavy cargo vehicle, which contained 28 pallets of Skims clothing, was X-rayed. The load was completely legal and neither the exporter nor the importer were associated with the smuggled load, although the truck was specially adapted and a concealment was built into the skin of the rear trailer door.
The truck was specially customized and a skin was built into the skin of the rear trailer doors.
Inside were 90 packages each containing 1 kg of cocaine, worth approximately £7.2 million.
Konkel’s tachograph showed a 16-minute stop that he failed to declare to the NCA in the interview, leading it to believe that the drugs were loaded onto the vehicle with only his and the crime group’s knowledge.
Konkel, from Kartuszy, northern Poland, initially denied knowing anything about the Class A drugs, but eventually pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and confessed that he had agreed to smuggle the drugs for a payment of 4,500 euros.
