A cocaine-smuggling sailor who was arrested with £60million worth of drugs he was trying to ship into the UK has only £4.07 in his bank account, a court has heard.
Scott Kilgour and skipper Gary Swift were caught red-handed when Border Force officers swooped on their yacht off the UK coast.
The drugs duo shipped more than 750kg of high purity cocaine, hidden in “every available storage space” in the boat, before they were nabbed by a security operation.
Kilgour and Swift had no idea they were being tracked by law enforcement agencies for several weeks which saw them travel from Spain to South America and then back to the UK.
Kilgour have already been sentenced to 13-and-a-half years behind bars, with Swift receiving 19-and-a-half years in jail for their roles in the smuggling operation, according to Wales Online.
They were back in the dock this week to face a further hearing called a proceeds of crime hearing, where it was established what money or assets the court could seize.
Tim Evans, prosecuting, said following a financial investigation the only assets of Kilgour’s that could be found was a bank account containing £4.07. The court ordered a confiscation order in that amount.
The barrister added that Kilgour, of Bedford Close, Huyton, Liverpool, should understand that were he to come into significant sums of money in the future, the prosecution could return to court and seek further confiscation orders.
A similar financial investigation into fellow Liverpudlian cocaine courier Swift, of no fixed abode, had previously identified that he held assets to the value of £328,071 including three boats, five caravans at various sites in the north of England, a Hymer mobile home, and a personalised registration number JAS5. These assets are in the process of being sold by the National Crime Agency.
Kilgour and Swift were arrested shortly before 3am on August 27, 2019, when Border Force officers intercepted a yacht called the Atrevido near St Bride’s Bay in Pembrokeshire.
The boat was towed to Fishguard harbour and searched, with officers uncovering a total of 751 one-kilo packages of high-purity cocaine hidden in “every available storage space” in the vessel.
The pair had sailed the boat from Spain to Suriname - a country described in court as “an established transport hub” for exporting wholesale quantities of Class A drugs - in the June of that year to collect their cargo before returning back across the Atlantic on their couriering cruise.
The wholesale value of the Class A haul found on the boat was put at around £24m, with a street value of perhaps £60m.
