One of Britain's most notorious drug smugglers, Curtis Warren, has been ordered to pay £185 million or face an additional 10 years in prison. The 50-year-old, who was once on the Sunday Times Rich List, faces a confiscation enforcement hearing this week in Jersey, where he was jailed in 2007 for a £1 million cannabis-smuggling plot.
Authorities believe Warren has profited by £185 million from a global drug trafficking empire that once made him Interpol's most wanted. However, Warren, a former bouncer from Liverpool who has spent all but five weeks of the last 17 years in jail, claims he does not have that amount of money. Speaking to the Guardian, he said: 'It's pathetic. I've been in jail 17 years. It's such a fantastic figure that it can't be met in any currency unless they are expecting Turkish lire or [old] Italian money, which is a million-note job.'
Warren believes the authorities in Jersey, working with the UK's National Crime Agency, want to keep him behind bars. If he loses the case and does not pay, he will receive an extra 10 years. As it stands, he could be released as early as January next year after serving half of his 13-year sentence. He has been moved between prisons including Belmarsh, Full Sutton, and La Moye.
This month, Warren agreed to restrictions on his release, including limits on mobile phone and phone box access. Keir Starmer, the outgoing director of public prosecutions, said: 'Curtis Warren has a long history of serious offending at home and abroad. By agreeing today to this order being imposed, he has admitted that he has been involved in serious criminality.'
Warren claims his criminal profits were seized by Dutch authorities when he was released from prison in Holland in 2007, just five weeks before his arrest in Jersey. In 1997, he was jailed for 12 years for importing cocaine, MDMA, cannabis, and weapons. He denies having hidden millions, saying: 'There is no money. Holland have got it all.'
Warren made headlines in the early 1990s when a case against him collapsed due to lack of evidence. A book claims he taunted police, but Warren denies this. He argues there is 'no evidence of any fantastic lifestyle' and that Jersey law unfairly requires him to prove he has no assets.
