FEB 07

The cocaine was worth more than £500,000

A Chinese restaurant chef who spent a fortnight holidaying in Grenada has gone on trial in Britain accused of trafficking illegal drugs.

San Keung Yau is accused of smuggling seven kilogrammes of cocaine worth more than £500,000 from the Caribbean to Britain. He has denied the charges.

Prosecutors told a court in Northampton in the English midlands that San Keung Yau was just one of several gamblers down on their luck targeted by a gang of drugs smugglers.

From the Chinese restaurant where he worked as a chef and social security benefits, Yau earned just one hundred and sixty pounds a week. When two ex-policemen offered him a two-week break in Grenada along with the opportunity to make some extra money to help pay off his gambling debts, he allegedly agreed.

The prosecutors said on the day of his return from Grenada he was back in a casino gambling with a payoff for smuggling half a million pounds worth of cocaine into Britain. But the plan went wrong when a reporter from the London tabloid newspaper, The News of the World infiltrated the gang which booked flights and accommodation for the so-called "drug mules".

The gang also arranged for suitcases to be fitted with illegal drugs in false compartments. The evidence exposed by the journalist tipped off the authorities who arrested gang members.

Yau's phone number was found on one of the mobile phones belonging to the drugs ring and he was arrested last year. The alleged ring leader of the gang, said to be a London-based West Indian known only as Derek, remains at large.