A LORRY driver found with £22million of cocaine hidden within frozen chicken meat denies any knowledge of a drug smuggling operation.

Robert Tromp, 49, was stopped at Harwich International Port on November 11, 2019.

In his trailer, Border Force officers found 280kg of cocaine concealed inside two pallets of frozen chicken meat.

Mark Seymour, opening the prosecution case before a jury at Chelmsford Crown Court, said: “This is an allegation of drug smuggling - moving drugs, in this case Class A, across borders and in this case on a massive scale.”

The court heard Tromp had made two previous recent trips to the UK in the same lorry, carrying an identical cargo of low-grade chicken.

All three trips involved Tromp travelling from the Hook of Holland to Harwich.

The Crown say on each occasion he carried documentation only permitting a trip to carry goods to a warehouse in Crowborough, in Sussex.

But on October 30 and November 4, the Crown say Tromp drove to a location in Huntington, Cambridgeshire, to deliver “the dirty side” of the load.

“He’s not going to Huntingdon for lunch,” said Mr Seymour.

“I’m just being slightly tongue-in-cheek to illustrate the point, but you’ve driven quite a considerable distance away from Harwich in what is essentially a northerly direction, completely the wrong direction to travel.

“Huntingdon clearly had a purpose.

“That purpose, the Crown say, is very straightforward and very simple, to drop part of the load in Huntingdon – that part being, as per trip three, two pallets which have drugs on board.”

Tromp, of Hillegom, in the Netherlands, denies one charge of fraudulently evading a prohibition on an importation and will insist he had no knowledge of any drug smuggling operation.

Mr Seymour said: “That huge value of cocaine product would only have been trusted to a knowing driver, one who was in on the deal and who could be relied upon and trusted to safely deliver this hugely valuable, precious, illicit cargo.

“The key issue in this case is knowledge.

“The defendant for his part denies bringing controlled drugs knowingly into the UK.”

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