Man behind 'Tesco' of drug smuggling jailed for 17 years
A drug baron said to have created the "Tesco" of cannabis smuggling, was jailed for 17-and-a-half years today.
Anthony Mills, 43, masterminded one of the "largest and most successful" operations ever seen in the UK as boss of the "Flowers Gang".
The syndicate hid super-strong skunk weed worth £61 million inside crates of blooms from Holland.
Between June 2006 and November 2007, they moved 18 tons of cannabis through UK ports netting £21 million in profits. Their exploits recently formed the plot for an episode of BBC crime drama The Shadow Line.
Mills also oversaw a massive money laundering operation, setting up companies in international tax havens to hide the gang's vast profits. Prosecutor Timothy Cray at Southwark crown court said: "If the man pushing cannabis on the street, the small-time dealer, is equivalent to the market trader selling his fruit and veg outside London Bridge station, then this group were the big players, the Tesco. Anthony Mills was the director of this Tesco."
His defence counsel, William Clegg QC, argued that co-conspirator Terrence Bowler had been the real mastermind. He said Mills had merely been a gang "director", with two other men, Peter Moran and Mark Kinnimont.
Mills, of no fixed address, was jailed for 10 years for conspiracy to import cannabis and seven-and-a-half years, consecutively, for conspiracy to conceal the proceeds of drug supply. Bowler, of Kingston-upon-Thames, was jailed for 16 years last March. Moran, of Fulham, and Kinnimont, of Surbiton, received 14 years each.
