Cocaine worth £33m headed for UK found in onion rings truck

Officers found 418kg of class A drugs when they stopped a lorry heading for Channel Tunnel

Seize & onion: a picture provided by the National Crime Agency shows some of the confiscated cocaine and the onion rings it was shipped with (NCA)

A haul of cocaine worth £33m has been found hidden inside a shipment of onion rings destined for the UK.

Border Force officers found the 418kg of drugs when they stopped a lorry heading for the Channel Tunnel in Coquelles, northern France, last Thursday.

Piotr Perzenowski, 30, from Poland, has now been charged with smuggling the class A drugs following a National Crime Agency investigation.

He appeared at Folkestone Magistrates’ Court in Kent on Saturday morning and was remanded to appear at Canterbury Crown Court on 13 December.

NCA branch commanded Mark Howes said: “This was a really significant amount of drugs taken out of circulation.

“The seizure will deprive the organised crime group responsible for them of profit which would have fuelled more offending.

“Working with our partners such as Border Force we will continue to fight the Class A drugs threat in our mission to protect the public.”