Five Britons guilty in £110 million drugs plot

Five British men have been found guilty of taking part in a plot to smuggle more than 500kg of cocaine with an estimated street value of £110million into Australia.

The five, all from London, attempted to smuggle the cocaine from Colombia to Australia in a yacht - but Australian narcotics agents were waiting for them at a beach near Sydney.

Officers also recovered a cache of weapons, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and fake passports.

The last chapter of the drugs hunt concluded in a district court in Sydney, almost five years after undercover officers listened in to the gang members hatching their plot by telephone.

Jacqueline Fox, the sister of plasterer Peter Fox, the last of eight men to be found guilty of being knowingly concerned with a prohibited import, made a passionate plea to the court to allow her brother to serve his sentence in a London jail.

Australia's federal police first launched an investigation into the already established Bondi Beach-based drug syndicate in late 1999.

Codenamed Operation Shard, agents began following 48-year-old Russell Bateman, who left London in the Eighties. Bateman later linked up with illegal immigrant and scaffolder Thomas McCaffrey, 47, pest controller Garry Bartle, 51, and Fox, 43. The fifth Briton was Hamish Thompson, 41.

Bartle was sentenced to 24 years, with no parole allowed for 16 years.

Bateman was sentenced to 13 years, with no parole for eight-and-a-half years. He is currently serving his sentence in England.

Thompson will be sentenced next month while McCaffrey and Fox will be sentenced in November.