Drug millionaires from Gravesend, Dartford and Swanley made to pay back just £1
00:00, 06 September 2016
Four men who benefited from a massive drugs ring to the tune of more than £1m have been ordered to pay back just £1 each.
That was the nominal figure ordered by a judge because Lee Selves, Sonny Selves, Nicholas Parker and Stevie Joyce were said to have “nil” assets.
Lee Selves, of Wellcome Avenue, Dartford, Sonny Selves, of no fixed address, Nicholas Parker, of Lower Range Road, Gravesend, and Stevie Joyce, 43, of Kirby Road, Dartford, were given seven days to pay.
They received lengthy sentences in June last year – Lee Selves 20 years, Sonny Selves 16-and-a-half years, Parker 18 years and Joyce 16 years.
Lee Selves, 29, Sonny Selves, 24, and Parker, 35, weresaid to have benefited by £1,045,000 and Joyce by £1,098,000.
Thomas Atkins, of Chave Road, Wilmington, also benefited by £1,098,000 and had realisable assets of £3,945. He was ordered to pay that amount within 14 days.
Roy James, of Dudley Avenue, Westgate, benefited by £1,593,470 and had assets of £97,109, which included a Harley Davidson motorcycle, a girocopter and £19,000 cash.
James, 55, who was jailed for 27 years, was given 60 days to pay the £97,109 or face a further 16 months jail in default.
Atkins, 31, was jailed for 17 and a half years.
Confiscation hearings are still to be held for others.
The eight Kent men who were sentenced and were involved in the multi-million pound drugs ring that aimed to flood the UK with heroin and cocaine, were locked up for a total of 147 years.
They played a part in “systematic and repeated large-scale importation” into the UK.
Prosecutor Richard Barton told Maidstone Crown Court they were part of an organised crime group hoping to make huge profits.
There were a series of importations in different places.
“They were of such large quantities that the value runs into millions of pounds if sold on the streets,” said Mr Barton.
“Only some of the drugs imported were, in fact, seized.
“This is effectively about a criminal commercial enterprise – the equivalent of a company.”
Two of the conspiracies from May to July and August to September in 2013 concerned supply of heroin and cocaine from commercial premises in Swanley.
