Photo: The Sun
Airline crew members have certain perks when it comes to boarding the flights they work, but these don’t include avoiding security or X-ray checks. That’s something this British Airways steward had no idea about.
Police in Sao Paolo, Brazil, arrested 43-year-old Jean Paul Ogou last week, after he tried to avoid having his carry-on bag scanned through the staff X-ray machine and a subsequent search revealed it was filled with pure cocaine.
The drugs would have been sold on the street in the UK for a profit upwards of £1.5 million.
The Sun reports that police found 13 kg (approximately 28 pounds) of the drug inside his case, packed neatly inside plastic bags and hid in pillow cases. The police report doesn’t mention whether they acted on a tip, but this kind of find is too impressive to have been an accident. British Airways sources claim that an organized crime syndicate has infiltrated the company, so Ogou might not be the only agent working for them.
Whether that’s accurate or not, one thing is clear: this was a well-planned move. “Anyone buying that amount of cocaine will need to fork out around £150,000,” one inside source is quoted as saying. “The thinking is the money was smuggled out of the country to Brazil on a BA flight in hard cash. Once cut, and sold for £50 or £60 a gram, this amount of drugs has a UK street value of around £1.5million.”
Ogou is a married man and has children. He lives in France but commutes to London, and has family links to the Ivory Coast, the British tabloid notes. He remains in prison in Brazil, while the police further investigate the massive find.
Because of Ogou’s arrest, flight BA246 from Sao Paolo to London took off with a considerable delay. BA confirms that Ogou is no longer in their employment: he had been working with the company for 10 years.
The drugs would have been sold on the street in the UK for a profit upwards of £1.5 million.
The Sun reports that police found 13 kg (approximately 28 pounds) of the drug inside his case, packed neatly inside plastic bags and hid in pillow cases. The police report doesn’t mention whether they acted on a tip, but this kind of find is too impressive to have been an accident. British Airways sources claim that an organized crime syndicate has infiltrated the company, so Ogou might not be the only agent working for them.
Whether that’s accurate or not, one thing is clear: this was a well-planned move. “Anyone buying that amount of cocaine will need to fork out around £150,000,” one inside source is quoted as saying. “The thinking is the money was smuggled out of the country to Brazil on a BA flight in hard cash. Once cut, and sold for £50 or £60 a gram, this amount of drugs has a UK street value of around £1.5million.”
Ogou is a married man and has children. He lives in France but commutes to London, and has family links to the Ivory Coast, the British tabloid notes. He remains in prison in Brazil, while the police further investigate the massive find.
Because of Ogou’s arrest, flight BA246 from Sao Paolo to London took off with a considerable delay. BA confirms that Ogou is no longer in their employment: he had been working with the company for 10 years.
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