Police discovered a massive cannabis operation when they raided a disused restaurant in Swansea city centre, finding 900 plants and sophisticated growing equipment worth up to £395,000 🚨
Swansea Crown Court heard that the former Meatery and Martini restaurant on The Strand had been completely converted into a three-floor cannabis farm by an organised crime group. When officers executed a search warrant on 8th May, they found Albanians Aleksander Cela, 26, and Dennis Horeshka, 30, tending to the illegal crop.
The court heard both men had paid people smugglers to enter the UK illegally and were in debt to those who organised their travel. A flat within the building had been set up as living quarters, stocked with food and bottles of “designer aftershave” 💼
Police also discovered a hole had been knocked through to the neighbouring disused bar, which was also being used to cultivate cannabis. The sophisticated operation spanned 903 plants across both premises.
Steven Burnell, representing Cela, told the court: “He had been at The Strand property for some two months watering the plants prior to the police raid, and he wanted the court to know he regretted his involvement in the operation.”
Andrew Evans, for Horeshka, described his client’s story as one that would be “all-too-familiar” to the court – “someone who had entered the UK illegally with the assistance of people traffickers to whom he owed money.”
Judge Huw Rees noted it was clear the defendants were not being held against their will and had “food, phones, money and relative freedom of movement.”
Both men, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to producing cannabis and were sentenced to 32 months in prison. The identity of the gang running the operation remains unknown.
