July 7 hero fireman was member of £100m cocaine gang

Simon Ford, 41, risked his life to get victims off the bus blown up in Tavistock Square during the terrorist attacks in London in 2005.

He won a London Fire Brigade Gold Award for his professionalism which was awarded by Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy. Pictures of the award ceremony can be found here.

His role in a 35-strong drug ring can now be reported after the final member of the group was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court and legal restrictions were lifted. Ford – a former drug addict – was jailed to 14 years.

A total of 33 criminals linked to the operation have been sentenced to more than 200 years in prison for offences including conspiracy to supply cocaine, money laundering and firearms offences.

In the largest raids ever conducted by British police, officers employed a mechanical digger to ram through a wall of a home in Uxbridge following 10 months of surveillance and bugging.

£100m ring

It is estimated the ringleaders amassed more than £100m in cash via a taxi garage under the Westway in Paddington, central London.

Royal Oak Taxis received huge consignments of cocaine ready for repackaging and distribution and served as a money laundering shop for gang members who swapped bags of sterling for smaller 500 euro notes.

Simon Ford was one of 22 people arrested when officers from Scotland Yard’s Special Intelligence Section (SIS), supported by more than 500 colleagues, raided homes across London and the Home Counties in February 2008.

The Soho-based firefighter was caught at his flat in Guildford Street, Chertsey, as he divided more than 100 kilos of cocaine, worth around £5.5m, for delivery to a ring of couriers waiting at service stations around the M25.

Police bulldozer smashes drug ring
It's was difficult to imagine the sight that confronted us back in November 2008, writes Home Affairs Correspondent Simon Israel.

A JCB bulldozer trundling down an ordinary suburban street at 5 o'clock in the morning, sunrise an hour away, surrounded by some 50 police officers all dressed in riot gear.

We watched as it wheel round to crush a five foot high wall, the weakest point in the battlements surrounding a £3m mansion in Hillingdon equipped with the latest in high-tech security including electrified gates.

Not exactly easy to creep up on in order not alert the property developer inside who was suspected of laundering a fortune made from drug trafficking.

The key was surprise to prevent Mr Maythem Al Ansari, a former Iraqi refugee, from destroying any crucial documents.

As the JCB ploughed through the wall, a dozen officers broke into the back garden with grinders to saw through the grills protecting the windows.

After the initial flurry we watched as the garage doors were raised to reveal the top of the range Mercedes to go with the luxury vehicles parked in the driveway.

The strategy at least bore fruit. The property developer struck a deal and pleaded guilty to laundering three quarters of a million pounds. He got three years. 

The Met police had billed that raid as part of a major crack at organised crime.

Today with the sentencing of the last of 33 convicted we learnt of what a top of the range drug and money laundering network looks like and, as one officer told Channel 4 News, what those drug dealers at the lower levels aspire to.

Cocaine arrived ‘by sea’

Police said the waterproof drug packages had been picked up at a beach in Hythe, Kent, the previous night after being delivered by men on an inflatable boat and were still wet with sea water.

Investigators realised what an important role Ford played in the gang when they found the drugs. They had believed he was simply a money courier.

A second man, cage fighter Aman Salhan, 28, of Oxford Avenue, Harlington, west London, was also found in the flat. He was jailed for 17 years after a jury found him guilty of conspiracy to import cocaine.

As officers searched the flat, dozens of phone calls were made to three pay-as-you-go mobile phones as worried criminal contacts tried to find out why the pair were running late.

Detective Superintendent Steve Richardson, head of the SIS, said the operation dealt a “huge blow” to the British class A drugs industry.

“These criminals had been living the lives of wealthy businessmen through their criminal activity. The lives they are now leading could not be more different,” he said.

“The link between drugs and violence has been well made and can ultimately be traced to violence and harm in London’s boroughs. ‘Operation Eaglewood’ has prevented these men contributing to that.”

Operation Eaglewood

The investigation, known as Operation Eaglewood, began in April 2007 after undercover police officers followed two known drug smugglers as they met a mystery accomplice.

Police learned he was Eyad Iktilat, 47, who operated Royal Oak Taxis, a taxi repair and loan company based in a breezeblock outhouse on industrial land alongside a dual carriageway.

Weeks of surveillance and a bug hidden in the office revealed the legitimate business was a front for a vast criminal empire as millions of pounds in cash and drugs flowed through its doors.

The crook lived a footballer’s lifestyle with a fleet of prestige cars, including a Bentley Continental and Ferrari with personalised number plates, and several homes, as well as plans to build a villa in Spain.

These criminals had been living the lives of wealthy businessmen through their criminal activity. The lives they are now leading could not be more different. Detective Superintendent Steve Richardson

Corrupt foreign exchange

Foot soldiers, known as money mules, brought bags of up to £500,000 cash to the taxi company so it could be converted into 500 euro notes via Euro Foreign Exchange (EFX), a corrupt currency exchange company in Paddington.

Investigators found EFX manager Jean-Claude Frigieri, 56, bought hundreds of thousands of pounds-worth of 500 euro notes from a banknote wholesaler known as Interchange.

British foreign exchange bureaux have since stopped selling the notes because of their use to organised criminals, who value the fact it is easy to conceal and smuggle them.

Others linked to the gang included a convicted murderer, bodybuilders and Cambridgeshire drug dealer Russell Tate, 49, whose brother Patrick who was shot dead in a Range Rover in Rettendon, Essex, in 1995.

The gang’s main banker, Iraq-born Maythen Al Ansari, 42, was jailed for three years for money laundering after his home in Vine Lane, Uxbridge, north west London, was raided by police who used a digger to smash down a wall.

The money laundering and drug distribution network was linked to up to 10 criminal gangs and had interests in Colombia, Spain, Israel, India, Dubai, Morocco and other north African states.