The trio were last week (October 25) sentenced at Southwark Crown Court after City of London police discovered cardboard boxes full of blister packs of “illicit pharmaceutical drugs” in a storage unit in Wembley in 2021, City of London Police said.
The “empire of pain” saw shipments of these illegal drugs into the UK from India “repackaged and distributed internationally”, with over 730kg of drugs – more than one million pills - seized during the police operation, it added.
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Some eleven different drugs were discovered in total, including nine Class C drugs such as opioid tramadol and pregabalin, cannabis resin – a Class B drug – and opioid tapentadol, which is categorised as a Class A drug, according to police.
Salman Ansari and Waqas Saleem, both 33, were both found guilty of 12 counts of possession with intent to supply Class A, B and C drugs, as well as one count of conspiracy to supply Class C drugs and one count of money laundering, it said.
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Salman Ansari, of Central Road in Wembley, received a six-year prison sentence and Saleem, of Sylvia Gardens in Wembley, was sentenced to two-and-a-half-years’ imprisonment, it added.
The third drug gang member – Juhi Ansari, 32 and of Central Road in Wembley, – was found guilty of one count of money laundering and received a suspended sentence along with an order to complete 100 hours of unpaid work and 25 days in rehab, it said.
“Emerging trend of misuse”
The investigation into the gang began in October 2020 after US Customs and Border forces seized shipments of illicit drugs from the UK and referred the case to the City of London Police’s Serious Organised Crime Team (SOCT), the police force said.
The SOCT began tracing the “large scale importation and distribution” of these unregulated pharmaceutical drugs, which were being sent from UK airports to JFK, it added.
This enabled police to “identify drop-off locations” of the drugs and officers arrested Salman Ansari and Saleem in the Wembley storage unit in July 2021, it said.
Read more: Suspended sentence for pharmacist who illegally supplied 300k co-codamol pills
Salman Ansari’s wife Juhi was arrested at their home address at the same time for money laundering charges, the force added.
Police discovered a “significant quantity” of large cardboard boxes in the storage unit that contained “thousands of blister packs” of what appeared to be pharmaceutical grade drugs – a total of 175 exhibits were seized from the location – it said.
Detective constable Syed Shah from the City of London Police’s SOTC said that the drugs discovered were part of “an emerging trend of misuse due to their availability and affordability”.
“Risk of Life”
“Many of the drugs seized are unregulated products for the UK market” including counterfeit Xanax with flubromazolam where the “dose and potency” of the pills were unknown, Shah added.
“The withdrawal from drugs such as pregabalin can be more severe than opiate withdrawal and presents the user with a risk of life,” he warned.
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The list of drugs discovered included:
· Class C – zolpidem, zopiclone, nitrazepam, tramadol, etizolam, pregabalin, flubromazolam, bromazolam, alprazolam (xanax)
· Class B – cannabis resin
· Class A – tapentadol
City of London Police also revealed that it carried out financial investigations into Salman Ansari, which found he had over 11 bank accounts in his name and a “credit turnover” of £1.09m – far more than he had ever declared to HMRC.
Read more: Illegally traded drugs worth ‘almost’ £5m seized in 2023, says MHRA
It added that the gang used “complex” money laundering techniques including transferring money to individuals in India and using various cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin as well as USD.
Earlier this month, a 27-year-old man pleaded guilty of producing cannabis after nearly 600 plants were found in a police raid of an old pharmacy building in Pembroke.
And a pharmacy in Mexico owned by a leading Sinaloa cartel family is facing sanctions over fentanyl trafficking, the US government revealed last month.