Skipper 'at heart of' £100m cocaine smuggling operation

A SWANSEA trawler skipper was “at the heart” of a £100m cocaine-smuggling operation, a court has heard.

- JASON EVANS

Jon Williams was at the helm of the Lily Lola fishing boat when it was intercepted off the coast of Cornwall carrying more than a tonne of high-purity cocaine from south America.

Asleep in a chair next to him was fellow Swansea man Patrick Godfrey.

Williams and Godfrey along with two other men - Michael Kelly and Jake Marchant - had just fished more than 1,000 one-kilo blocks of cocaine out of the sea which had been dumped at an agreed rendezvous point by members of an international organised crime group.

But unbeknown to the four men on the craft, the National Crime Agency had had them in their sights for several months.

At Truro Crown Court yesterday, Williams was jailed for 26 years and Godfrey for 25 years for what the judge called a “carefully planned and sophisticated attempt” to smuggle an “extraordinary” amount of cocaine into the UK, a quantity of drugs which he said would have caused “immeasurable harm on the streets of this country”.

Frederick Hookway, prosecuting, told the court that in the summer of 2024 Williams negotiated the purchase of the Lily Lola for some £140,000 from a man in Kent. On August 12 the craft was transferred to Swansea Marina, where it was kept under surveillance by undercover officers who monitored comings and goings.

On August 18 Williams and Godfrey were observed on the boat in the marina and then on September 1 the craft - with Williams at the helm - sailed out into the Celtic Sea.

The court heard the Lily Lola was intercepted by a Border Force vessel but nothing was found and it subsequently returned to Swansea.

The prosecutor said the defendant Kelly then arrived in Swansea and inadvertently spoke to one of the undercover officers who was keeping watch on the Lily Lola in the marina.

On September 7 the vessel left Swansea and sailed to Newquay in Cornwall where it moored in the harbour. The crew said the vessel had engine troubles and needed some work doing.