TWO men who conspired with a pilot to fly cocaine and heroin across the channel in a rented aircraft have been given prison sentences totalling 14 years following an investigation involving the National Crime Agency, Border Force and French authorities.

Jamie Sharples, aged 30, from Bolton and Wayne Coates, aged 49, from Wigan, had been due to collect a delivery of class A drugs from pilot Philip Molyneux. Coates travelled to meet him at an airfield near Clacton, Essex on the morning of October 31, 2012.

However, Molyneux never made the rendezvous. He was arrested by French customs and police in Abbeville airfield before he was able to take-off. French officers found 12 kilos of cocaine and a kilo of heroin in a bag in his plane.

If cut and sold in the UK the haul would have had a potential street value of over £1.5 million.

The French had been alerted after British authorities noted suspicious activity involving the aircraft, which was rented from a firm in Blackpool.

Following his arrest the French authorities found calls and messages on Molyneux’s phone from numbers which were later linked by the NCA to Coates and Sharples.

Molyneux, 51, originally from Southport, was given a five year prison sentence in France for drugs offences. After his trial the French passed evidence regarding his contacts with individuals in the UK to the NCA.

Investigators were able to link Sharples, of Marlbrook Drive, Westhoughton, and Coates to the plot through mobile phones and rental vehicles which were used to travel between the north west and Clacton. Both men had also made trips to Amsterdam together.

They were arrested by the NCA in October 2015 at their home addresses and eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to import class A drugs.

A judge at Bolton Crown Court sentenced Sharples to eight years in prison while Coates got six years.

Jon Hughes, from the NCA’s North West Border Investigation team, said:

“This has been a long and complicated investigation, but the result is that these two men, who were involved in bringing class A drugs to the north west, are behind bars."