DRUG kingpin Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson has been jailed for 20 years over a global plot to flood Scotland with £100m worth of cocaine.
Five other men – David Bilsland, 68; Paul Bowes, 53; Gerard Carbin, 45; Ryan McPhee, 34; and Lloyd Cross, 32 – also pled guilty to serious organised crime and drug offences.
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We told how the 59-year-old had last month blamed four other hoods for shipping millions of pounds worth of cocaine from South America to the UK under the guise of banana shipments.
But he sensationally changed his plea to guilty on the fourth day of evidence in a bombshell organised crime trial at the High Court in Glasgow.
Thomas Ross KC, representing the notorious hood, told Judge Lord Ericht his client was pleading guilty to two charges on the seven-page indictment.
Stevenson admitted importing cocaine, a controlled class A drug, between January 25, 2020 and September 21, 2020.
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He directed and instructed David Bilsland, 67, and others to carry out said serious offence by concealing the drugs in “deliveries of imported fruit” destined for Glasgow Fruit Market for onward supply.
The offences were linked to locations in Glasgow as well as Plaza del Puerto, Alicante, Spain, and Puerto Bolivar, Ecuador, and Nurai Island Resort, Abu Dhabi.
He also admitted concealing, possessing and transferring criminal property, namely money and to use said money to finance the set-up of the Importation operation and to purchase equipment for the said Glasgow Fruit Market and Glasgow Fruit Market Scotland Ltd.
Career crook Stevenson further admitted being involved in a street valium plot along with co-accused Garry Carbin, 45, and Ryan McPhee, 34, who admitted the offence the day before.
It detailed an astonishing crime conspiracy that linked a Glasgow Fruit Market in the city’s Townhead to a port in Ecuador – one of the world’s biggest producers of the Class A narcotic.
Stevenson also called the shots on the massive trans-Atlantic scheme from a luxury Gulf bolthole known as the Nurai Island Resort off the coast of Abu Dhabi.
The hoods involved used encrypted Encrochat handsets to communicate and share details about their illicit plan to bring in high purity cocaine with a potential street value of £100million.
ENCROCHAT EXPLAINED
BY GRAHAM MANN
THE Encrochat network favoured by criminals was one of the largest encrypted communications services in the world.
Around 60,000 people across Europe used it, with around 10,000 of those users being from the UK.
Mystery continues to surround the people who made and supplied the handsets to hoods eager to keep their activities off the radar.
But the users came unstuck when French law enforcement cracked the system using software they have kept a closely guarded secret.
We told last week how a leading crimebuster said the takedown of Encrochat phones gave Scots cops the upper hand – and “turbo-boosted” their fight against gangsters.
Miles Bonfield, deputy director of the National Crime Agency, hailed the impact of Operation Venetic, a hi-tech blitz that unearthed the activities of hundreds of hoods.
He said: “It made a real difference to turbo-boosting some investigations that were already running and giving them the vital insight and evidential assistance they needed to prove their heinous criminality.”
A digital forensics expert told The Iceman’s trial the vast data haul gathered from an EncroChat sting was “the most information ever seen” in any single Police Scotland probe.
Detective Constable Paul Graham revealed the scale of the messages harvested by French and Dutch authorities as he gave evidence at the High Court in Glasgow.
The info gathered from the encrypted devices formed a key part of Operation Pepperoni which ultimately triggered the downfall of Stevenson and his gang.
The 46-year-old told jurors he has been part of Police Scotland’s Cyber Crime Unit for a decade and has 24 years’ experience in the force.
He was asked by Advocate Depute Alex Prentice KC about how the force managed the haul provided via Europol and the National Crime Agency (NCA) after French law enforcement infiltrated the encrypted device network in 2020.
He said: “It was the most information in any single inquiry Police Scotland has ever seen.
“We had to find a way to get that into the system to be able to search by the appropriate means.”
The 119, 1kg blocks of coke with a purity of no less than 79 percent were hidden in banana boxes with a ‘Calypso’ brand delivered in a series of shipments to the Port of Dover in 2020.
They were labelled for onward delivery to a unit in the city’s Kennedy Street – but Border Force officials unearthed the haul, leading to a hunt for those involved.
Stevenson had earlier stuck to a not guilty plea and lodged a special defence, blaming other hoods James ‘The Don’ White, John Gurie, Lloyd Cross and Stephen Jamieson, whose whereabouts is unknown.
ICEMAN AND THE CRONIES
DAVID BILSLAND
DAVID Bilsland had been a respected fruit merchant in Glasgow for decades before his stunning fall from grace, using his business as a front for importing cocaine.
GERRY CARBIN
STEVENSON’s step-son Gerry Carbin is his closest and longest-serving underling who also happens to be his step-son.
PAUL BOWES
CAREER crook Paul Bowes was nicked in Spain as part of the probe into James Stevenson’s global cocaine importation plot.
RYAN MCPHEE
RYAN McPhee was part of the street valium arm of Stevenson’s global drugs racket.
LLOYD CROSS
LLOYD Cross was the first of the original seven accused of being involved in the cocaine conspiracy to admit his guilt.
But as the evidence began to pile up he changed his mind and admitted his part in the conspiracy, amid a dramatic twist that brought an end to a trial that was expected to last five weeks.
On the day the trial began on August 7, co-accused Cross admitted his role in the coke plot before jurors were sworn in.
Read more on the Scottish Sun
They heard four days of evidence in a trial that was expected to last up to five weeks but Carbin and McPhee admitted producing and supplying ‘street valium’ as part of Stevenson’s gang.
Then the following day Stevenson, Bilsland and Paul Bowes, 53, threw in the towel and admitted their roles in the face of overwhelming evidence.