A qualified pilot used his light aircraft in a bid to smuggle cocaine into the UK.
Pilot Anastasios Balian, 52, and accomplice Errol McCardo Weir, 48, admitted trying to bring 30kg of the Class A drug into the country, following a National Crime Agency investigation.
On 20 March this year, they were stopped by Border Force officers at North Weald airfield in Epping, Essex, after landing from Belgium via Calais.
Officers searched the small plane and discovered a concealment had been built into the rear seats. Inside it were 30 1kg blocks of cocaine with a street value of about £2.4 million.
Weir, a photographer, of Shifford Path, Lewisham, south London, admitted smuggling the drugs last month when he appeared at Chelmsford Crown Court.
Today (Friday 16 May), Balian, who runs a company conducting aerial surveys, also admitted the same count. They will return to court for sentencing on a date to be fixed.
A WhatsApp chat was discovered between the offenders’ phones. It contained a link to a news story with the headline ‘Gang use small aircraft to drop cocaine into Dorset’.
Balian, of Milton Court, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, joked in another message that the gang must have watched the Tom Cruise film ‘American Made’, which is a plot based on light aircraft cocaine trafficking into the US.
