In February of last year, undercover police in Venezuela filmed the Samantha arriving in a warehouse in the port city of Puerto Caballo. Paul Stromberg and Paul Clough will be sentenced later Police seized the boat, and used X-ray equipment to examine it, the court heard. They discovered a substantial number of blocks hidden in the lower half of the boat beneath a false floor. The jury was told after drilling through the floor, they discovered 337 kilos of cocaine said to be "almost perfectly pure".
Once "cut" with other drugs it would have had a street value estimated at more than £40m. When he was arrested, Stromberg told detectives from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), that he was a simple businessman who had property deals and catering interests. The court heard he said: "I'm not a man of lavish means by a long shot; I struggle like the rest of us." Stromberg, of Abergavenny, Gwent, was convicted of conspiracy to commit a drug trafficking offence outside the UK. He had earlier pleaded guilty to possession of the class A drug with intent to supply.The plans of Paul Clough, 44, of Leeds and property dealer Paul Stromberg, 42, to bring their haul of 81% pure cocaine into Britain was foiled by an X-ray, London's Woolwich Crown Court heard.
The speedboat, called Samantha, was bought in Venezuela and was to be shipped by container to Portugal before arriving at British shores, the jury heard.
But Venezuelan officials who examined the boat in February 2007 found 300 blocks of cocaine concealed skilfully within the fibreglass hull of the vessel and in total 337 kilograms of cocaine were beneath the area of the fuel tank.
Clough had earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a drug trafficking offence outside the UK.A date for sentencing has yet to be set.
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