CONSPIRACY TO SUPPLY & MONEY LAUNDERING SENTENCING
Mark Gadsden and Edward Franklin successfully prosecuted a prominent member of an Albanian organised crime group on behalf of the Crown Prosecution Service and National Crime Agency.
Bujar Cozminca purchased and supplied 100 kilograms of cocaine, with a wholesale value of £3.5m and a street value of around £8m, in addition to laundering £2.5m of criminal cash.
The defendant was deported following his last conviction at Bristol Crown Court in 2013 for conspiracy to supply cocaine, but he returned illegally to the UK in order to carry on dealing in cocaine on a far greater scale.
The prosecution case was that he was a “national distributor" playing a leading role in a “professional, sophisticated, commercial, pan-national operation to sell large amounts of high purity cocaine in both kilo and multi-kilo amounts”.
Cozminca was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment at Snaresbrook Crown Court on 28th June 2024.
Operation Venetic: Albanian OCG member jailed over multi million pound drugs offences | National Crime Agency