'Flying Dutchman' drug dealer, 53, who was arrested on the TOILET while smuggling cocaine worth more than £2.4 million into the UK in a light aircraft is jailed for 23 years

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John Buwalda, 52, was jailed for 23 years today for smuggling £2.4m worth of cocaine into the country hidden in the wing weights of a light aircraft

A ‘Flying Dutchman’ drug dealer was jailed for 23 years today for smuggling £2.4m worth of cocaine into the country hidden in the wing weights of a light aircraft.

John Buwalda, 52, delivered the drugs to Polish national Jan Polak, 61, at a Holiday Inn hotel near Rochester Airport in Kent after the trip from Holland.

The pilot had made the same flight and stayed at the same hotel ‘several times before’ being stopped on 30 June last year.

Officers from the National Crime Agency (NCA) pounced as Polak left with two Sports Direct bags stuffed with 22 packages of cocaine at a purity of between 80 and 87 per cent.

Buwalda claimed he worked for a medical school training Asian dentists and had only brought the wing weights into the hotel to ‘show off’ as a pilot after flying the company plane

The haul of drugs had a wholesale value of the cocaine is £726,000, and had it been cut and sold on the streets its value was an estimated £2.5 million.

Buwalda claimed he worked for a medical school training Asian dentists and had only brought the wing weights into the hotel to ‘show off’ as a pilot after flying the company plane.

Buwalda was caught on CCTV walking into a Holiday Inn hotel near Rochester Airport

He is seen in the footage checking into the hotel carrying two suitcases - filled with drugs

Officers then watched as Polish national Polak got two sports bags from his van and went up to divorced father-of two Buwalda’s hotel room for the handover

Polak told jurors he had been employed by a man called ‘Timmy’ to pick up a parcel and had no idea there were drugs in the bags.

But the pair were found guilty by a jury following an Old Bailey trial in December.

Jailing the pair, Recorder Judge Oliver Sells QC said: ‘This was a professional, commercial and international smuggling enterprise planned over several months and executed with great precision.

‘The plan was to import 22 kilos of cocaine at a purity in excess of 80 per cent to make a substantial unlawful profit for those individuals fuelling the abhorrent trade which blights our society.’

Polak was given 17 years after the judge said he was a vital link in the chain and had adapted his car to have a special compartment to hide the drugs.

John Buwalda, 52, delivered the drugs to Polish national Jan Polak, 61, pictured, at a Holiday Inn hotel near Rochester Airport in Kent after the trip from Holland

Buwalda was told: ‘You played a leading role, hiding behind another company with a respectable face.’

‘You deliberately chose a small airport to increase you chances of not being detected - it’s something that’s become a common feature of these large scale importations.’

Buwalda seemed stunned as his sentence was read out, and shock his head as he was lead to the cells.

The court heard Polak was watched by NCA officers from around 11am on the morning of 30 June as he waited for the plane to arrive.

At around 1.10pm he was seen walking into the hotel with two Sports Direct bags and taking a lift to the second floor.

When he was arrested on his way out of the hotel officers opened the bags and found 22 packages of cocaine.

During the search Polak dropped his Blackberry phone and tried to kick it underneath nearby shrubbery.

Officers also examined his Renault Kangoo and discovered a ‘sophisticated’ secret compartment running the width of the car behind the front seats with a depth of six inches.

Polak told the officers he had received the packages from a man on the second floor but denied knowing they contained drugs.

In court he insisted: ‘I didn’t know there were drugs there. I was just picking up a parcel. I was supposed to pass it to the other person.’

Polak said he had been working in marketing to sell a cosmetics range produced using nanotechnology, which he claimed had ‘made me look younger by ten years’.

He moved to England in March this year, when he got a flat in Finchley before he claimed he began carrying out delivery work for ‘Timmy’.

He said that during the exchanges, the password ‘Audi’ would be used.

A search of Buwalda’s hotel room recovered a black flight case containing plastic gloves along with a lock knife and large empty red metal boxes.

The haul of drugs had a wholesale value of the cocaine is £726,000, and had it been cut and sold on the streets its value was an estimated £2.5 million

The red boxes were in fact weights which normally hang from the wings of the aircraft when parked - it is believed the drug packages were stashed inside the boxes.

Buwalda did not give evidence in court, but claimed in interview that he worked for ‘Chinese Europe Medical Postgrad Academy’ in Holland training Asian dentists and was allowed free use of their plane.

He said he had travelled to the UK to network at Greenwich University on behalf of the academy.

Asked why he brought the red wing weight boxes to the hotel, he claimed he liked to ‘show off and look the part of a pilot’.

Emma Akuwudike, for Buwalda, told the court that the father-of-two had grown up in a deprived family but had worked his way out of poverty by doing a basic course in IT.

He did a bachelor’s degree in Marketing, before going on to get a Masters in Business Administration.

Officers from the National Crime Agency (NCA) pounced as Polak left with two Sports Direct bags stuffed with 22 packages of cocaine, pictured, at a purity of between 80 and 87 per cent

She added that he is separated from his wife, but that his two teenage children had been living with him at the time of his arrest.

He had genuinely been trying to launch his dentistry school, she said, and also worked as chairman of a wildlife foundation in Germany.

‘He’s lost everything - it’s meant his reputation has been damaged not just in Holland but in China.

‘There’s been adverse publicity in the media and that will be difficult to repair.’

Mark Tomassi, for Polak, told the court that his client had been suffering from a prostate condition throughout his trial and had been very unwell since being in prison.

‘I deal with someone who is in the autumn of his life - I deal with someone who will have to serve his sentence away from those who love and care for him.’

Polak, of (Flat 3) Willowtree Court, in Howard Drive, Borehamwood, Herts, and Buwalda, of Hilversum, in the Netherlands, both denied but were convicted of conspiracy to fraudulently evade the prohibition on the importation of controlled drugs, Class A.