LONDON (AFP) – In a major bust that exposed how organised criminal networks hide narcotics inside legitimate commercial shipments, a Polish truck driver has been handed a 13-and-a-half-year prison sentence for smuggling 90 kilograms of cocaine valued at over £7 million ($9.3 million) concealed within a shipment of Kim Kardashian’s popular shapewear brand Skims, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency (NCA) confirmed Monday.
The smuggling operation was uncovered last September, when UK Border Force officers pulled over Jakub Jan Konkel, 40, after his heavy goods vehicle entered eastern England following a crossing from the Netherlands. A subsequent inspection of the lorry revealed that criminals had made deliberate modifications to the vehicle, building secret compartments within the inner lining of the trailer’s rear doors to hide the Class A drugs. At the time of the stop, the lorry was carrying 28 full pallets of Skims clothing, a legitimate global cargo that the criminal network had exploited to avoid suspicion.
Following a months-long NCA investigation, Konkel was formally convicted and sentenced at a UK court this week. NCA operations manager Paul Orchard noted that the conviction and seizure mark a major blow to the organised crime group behind the plot. Criminal networks routinely rely on complicit drivers like Konkel to move high-value Class A drugs across European borders, hiding contraband in entirely legal commercial shipments to fly under the radar of border enforcement, Orchard explained.
“Taking this large shipment of cocaine off the streets not only prevents the harm this drug would have caused to UK communities, it also deprives the criminal group behind the plot of millions in illicit profit,” Orchard said. “With Konkel’s conviction, they have also lost a key facilitator that helped them move their contraband across borders.”