Five held after police seize £3.5m cocaine in shoeboxes

Police seized more than 70kg of cocaine and £100,000 in cash stashed in shoeboxes in a raid in east London.

The drugs haul, with a street value of £3.5 million, was found when officers from the Met’s Violent Crime Taskforce swooped on an address in Romford last night. Detectives also recovered a loaded handgun.

Three men aged 24, 27 and 53, and two women aged 25 and 53, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to supply cocaine, possession of criminal property and possession of a firearm and ammunition. Today all were being questioned at east London police stations.

Detective Superintendent Sean Yates said: “This was a result of fast-time intelligence about the supply of drugs to east London gangs. A seizure on this scale will disrupt the flow of class-A drugs.

“A potentially lethal firearm has been taken off the streets.”

The small handgun is thought to be a 4mm Flobert, a weapon popular with London gangs.

They are banned in Britain but freely available in east European countries such as the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Slovakia.

In recent months politicians and senior police officers have warned drugs are fuelling a surge in gang-related violence in London.

A recent Home Office report cited a higher supply of cocaine from Colombia as a reason for a rise in violence. Mayor Sadiq Khan and Met Commissioner Cressida Dick have also raised concerns that middle-class use of drugs was also driving offending.

John Coles, head of special operations at the National Crime Agency, said gangs’ drug activities “are in part fuelling the surge in violent crime”.