CLIFTON ROCHESTER

Last Updated: Monday, 19 December 2005, 17:54 GMT

Cocaine smuggling leader jailed

Rochester spent money on cars and fee-paying schools
The man behind an international drug smuggling and supply ring has been jailed for 14 years.
Clifton Rochester, 36, of Thistlecroft Gardens, London admitted conspiracy to import and supply cocaine, deception and money laundering offences.

His girlfriend Anita Holmes, 34, was given a two-year suspended sentence at Bristol Crown Court after admitting living off the proceeds of crime.

Millions of pounds of cocaine brought from Jamaica was dealt in Bristol.

The court heard how hundreds of kilograms of cocaine were smuggled from Jamaica to the UK by air and transported along the M4 to reach Bristol’s streets.

‘Obscene profits’

Couriers included former Miss Jamaica contestant Marsha Paragonsingh who worked as an Air Jamaica hostess and hid packages of the drug in a customised body-stocking.

Judge Simon Darwall-Smith told Rochester he had used the “obscene profits” he made to finance a lifestyle of “motor cars, club class travel and fee-paying schools”.

Rochester was arrested in 2003 at Leicester City Football Club’s Walker Stadium.

The other members of his gang were sentenced earlier this year.

Paragonsingh, 26, from St Catherine, Jamaica pleaded guilty and was jailed for seven years for conspiracy to import the drugs.

Rochester’s wife, Latoya Grosse, 29, from Carmelite Road, London was jailed for three-and-a-half years after admitting money laundering and deception offences.

His nephew, Marvin Young, 25, from Bishops Way, London was jailed for five years after admitting conspiracy to import cocaine.

Edmund Young, 38, from Rathcoole Gardens, London and Gerald Jones, 31, of College Road, Bristol were both jailed for six years after admitting conspiracy to supply cocaine.

The final gang member, Elijah Beverley, 26, from Harrow Road, London, was jailed for five years after being found guilty of involvement in the conspiracy to supply cocaine.