Brit couple's £20m drug empire transporting ketamine and cocaine across Europe comes crashing down after arrest at Pacha nightclub in Ibiza
A Liverpool man's £20m drug empire came crashing down after he was arrested in Ibiza's Pacha nightclub.
Eddie Burton, 23, and his ex-partner Sian Banks, worked together on the criminal enterprise which helped transport drugs across Europe. Burton was living in mainland Europe when two lorries, containing heroin, cocaine and ketamine, were intercepted at Dover port in the summer of 2022.
In total, the drugs weighed 307kg with an estimated street value of £20m. Border Force officers stopped the first lorry on July 3, 2022, and found 90 kilos of ketamine and 50 kilos of cocaine packed into boxes and a Lidl shopping bag.
The second lorry was intercepted just six weeks later, on 12 August. Inside, officers discovered 142 kilos of cocaine and 25 kilos of heroin in a fuel tank that had been modified to hide the drugs from officers.
The driver, 64-year-old Latvian national Maris Fridvalds, was jailed for 14 years in March 2023 for his role as a courier in the attempted importation. When examined, forensics found Burton's fingerprints and DNA on both drug shipments and the adapted fuel tank.
A manhunt was launched to find Burton, who was living between the Netherlands and Spain after leaving the UK in early 2021. Spanish Police arrested Burton in August 2023 at Pacha nightclub for unrelated drug dealing offences. At the time he was using an alias in an attempt to evade detection.
After he was extradited to Germany and charged with drug offences, he was eventually returned to the UK in March 2024 by National Extradition Unit officers from the National Crime Agency's Joint International Crime Centre. Burton subsequently pleaded guilty to four counts of importing Class A and B drugs.
His ex-partner, Sian Banks, 25, also from Liverpool, pleaded guilty to a total of seven charges on 3 February, including importing Class A drugs and money laundering after first being arrested in December 2023. She pleaded guilty to assisting Burton's criminal enterprise on the first day of her trial at Canterbury Crown Court on Monday (3 February).
The NCA found that between June 2022 and October 2023 she travelled to the Netherlands and Spain monthly to see Burton. Following a review of her phone, it was also found how Banks smuggled cocaine and ketamine into the UK in her luggage on two occasions in August 2022 after visiting Burton in Amsterdam.
She was also found to be operating a scam selling doctored Covid-19 travel documents in the height of the pandemic. The pair will be sentenced at Canterbury Crown Court on 11 February.