Man jailed for using wine bottles to smuggle drugs

A man in the UK has been jailed for five years for trying to smuggle £8 million worth of liquid amphetamine into the country hidden in wine bottles.

Lee Dyer was stopped by the UK Border Force at the Channel Tunnel terminal of Coquelles in France last year and his van checked.

He claimed he had been in Belgium doing a plastering job and collecting solar panels which he was taking back to Merseyside but the officers instead found boxes containing over 100 bottles of wine.

Noticing that the liquid in the bottle was oily and not much like wine, the bottles were confiscated and tests conducted. The tests later showed that the liquid was amphetamine.

The 99 kilos held in the bottles could have been used to  produce almost three quarters of a tonne of the drug worth over £8m.

Dyer plead guilty to importing controlling drugs last month and was jailed for five years at his sentencing this week at Canterbury Crown Court.

Last year, as a counterpoint, a Northern Irish haulier was charged with smuggling £2m worth of vodka hidden in bottles of Evian mineral water.