Drug baron branded ‘Escobar of Essex’ is jailed for 16 years: Crime boss linked to Colombian cartels bungled £20m coke operation by mistakenly sending 30kg of narcotics to South Africa

• Jonathan Parkhill, 55, from Clacton, was busted through his encrypted messages
• He was trying to correct the mistake of a 30kg shipment meant for Germany

A drug baron branded the ‘Escobar of Essex’ has been jailed for 16 years after he bungled a £20million cocaine operation by mistakenly sending the narcotics to South Africa.

Jonathan Parkhill, 55, originally of Clacton, Essex, was busted by investigators through his encrypted digital messages as he tried to correct the mistake of a 30kg shipment of the drug meant for Germany, which was seized in 2020.

Another of his criminal escapades that year saw Parkhill and his right-hand man Kevin Hanley, 44, smuggle over £16million’s worth of cocaine, about 500kg of it, to Belgium.

According to The Sun, the money from that job was meant to be split between Parkhill and ‘Colombian groups’ – but the deal went south and his co-smuggler was beaten up as a result.

Parkhill’s arrest was upon his return to the UK at Heathrow Airport in 2021 as he flew back from Colombia, the home and base of infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar, the sole leader of the Medellín Cartel.

Drug baron Jonathan Parkhill, 55, originally of Clacton, branded the ‘Escobar of Essex’ has been jailed for 16 years after he bungled a £20million cocaine operation by mistakenly sending the narcotics to South Africa

Parkhill’s arrest was upon his return to the UK at Heathrow Airport in 2021 as he flew back home from Colombia, the home and base of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar (pictured, his mugshot in 1977), the sole leader of the Medellín Cartel

A source told the publication that Parkhill ‘is one of the biggest drugs traffickers caught in the UK for a long time’.

Hanley was ‘held’ not far from his home in Uxbridge, West London. Officers also reportedly found a sawn-off shotgun in the property.

Appearing at Isleworth Crown Court, Parkhill and Hanley admitted conspiracy to import cocaine as well as admitting a ‘string of other offences’.

Parkhill was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Hanley was handed an 11-and-a-half year prison sentence. 

Their arrests were among 746 others as part of the National Crime Agency’s Operation Venetic.

Set up in 2020, the NCA’s objective was to ‘take down the encrypted communication platform EncroChat’, which ‘at the time was one of the largest providers of encrypted communication’.

Parkhill was busted by investigators through his encrypted digital messages as he tried to correct the mistake of a 30kg shipment of the drug meant for Germany, which was seized in 2020. He was jailed for 16 years at Isleworth Crown Court (pictured, file photo)

The EncroChat system used modified Android phones and cost £1,500 for just six months of use.

Handsets could only communicate with other identical phones.

They only had the special chat app on them, apart from a currency converter to help calculate profit on deals.

There were thought to be 10,000 users in the UK, with an estimated 60,000 worldwide.

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