An airport security boss who helped a couple ‘smuggle’ £2million in cocaine from Colombia has been jailed.
Junaed Dar, 47, turned up at Heathrow Airport three hours before his shift to meet Michael Williams, 39, and Jessica Waldron, 38, to help them bring in the drugs.
The manager used an airport vehicle and drove it to Terminal 2B to meet the couple who were due to land on a flight from Bogota on December 14, 2019.
They had stuffed 22kg of cocaine into their luggage but, unbeknownst to them, Colombian police had found the haul and swapped it for wooden blocks and tipped off the National Crime Agency before their departure.
As Williams and Waldron, of Dudley, West Midlands, retrieved their bags, Dar escorted them to the toilets where he took the supposed drugs and got into the vehicle, before NCA officers arrested him.
The couple were later arrested by Border Force officers working with the agency as they tried to leave the airport.
They were each jailed for six years and eight months in 2022 for attempting to import Class A drugs.
Meanwhile, Dar, of Slough, Berkshire, was convicted of attempting to smuggle Class A drugs and jailed for 16 and a half years at Kingston Crown Court.
Ruford Davis, 55, and David Farquharson, 53, took part in the organisation of the drug couriers’ outward and return journeys.
Davis, of Dudley and Farquharson, of Wednesbury, West Midlands, were both sentenced to 14-and-a-half years.
Mark Abbott, NCA operations manager, said: ‘Dar committed a gross betrayal of trust by playing a crucial role in this conspiracy which started in South America and would have ended with violent street gangs in UK towns and cities.
‘Organised crime groups need corrupt insiders like Dar to help move illegal commodities. As an airport security manager, he had the access and ability to move drugs so they might not be stopped.
‘Heathrow Airport fully supported the operation along with Border Force and together we continue to combat the threat of Class A drugs being smuggled this way.’