Two international drug traffickers who planned to ‘flood the streets of Europe’ with cocaine have been jailed.

Anthony Dennis, aged 48, from Bassetts Lane, Ongar, was captured in August after flying back to the UK from Spain, where he had been on the run.

At the Old Bailey yesterday (November 18) he was sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison for plotting with criminals in the UK and abroad to import up to three tonnes of cocaine, worth hundreds of millions of Euros, into Europe.

His accomplice Anthony Wilson, 38, from Harlow, was sentenced to 12 years.

The two men were identified following an investigation by the National Crime Agency and police in the Netherlands, where they planned their trafficking operations.

They were regulars at the Café de Ketel in Rotterdam, a ‘front’ business hiding a global operations centre for international traffickers.

The café, run by two Turkish brothers, was open 18 hours a day.

It could only be entered via a buzzer system, was strictly for known faces, and provided a meeting place where criminals negotiated with cartel members and arranged buying and transporting huge quantities of drugs.

Dutch police officers secretly recorded meetings in the café proving Dennis and Wilson were buying cocaine from South America and having it transported in shipping containers carrying legitimate cargo.

The Turkish brothers and their criminal associates then removed the drugs using corrupt port officials, before storing the shipments.

The English men’s plan unravelled when 67.5 kilogrammes of cocaine was not removed from a shipping container in Antwerp, Belgium, in May 2013.

It was later seized by German authorities in Essen.

In October that year, Wilson was arrested when British and Dutch authorities made multiple strikes and raided the café.

Two handguns, over 100 mobile phones, €300,000, a cash counting machine, a radio scanner, a radio jammer and high-value watches were all found, with nine handguns, two semi-automatic rifles, a cocaine press and €200,000 discovered at other addresses in Rotterdam.

Dennis went on the run until he returned following a ‘most wanted’ campaign, which saw his face broadcast on giant screens to crowds of ex-pats, tourists and locals in Spain.

The two men were sentenced late yesterday after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit a foreign drug trafficking offence.

Specialist prosecutor Anthony Hill said: “These men worked with criminals overseas to plan a large and complex drug-smuggling operation, plotting to bring up to three tonnes of cocaine from South America.

“If successful, this would have flooded the streets of Europe with drugs worth hundreds of millions of Euros.

“Their criminal activity was co-ordinated overseas, but so was the response from the criminal justice system.

“We worked closely with Dutch authorities and the National Crime Agency and the strength of our evidence left the defendants with no choice but to plead guilty.”