Pictures and video: How kingpin Uddin operated his huge Class A drugs empire

THE kingpin of a multi-million pound cocaine racket involving Kingswinford drug dealers and Albanian gangsters has been jailed for 16 years.

Khalad Uddin, who stashed almost half a million pounds in cash at an Oxford penthouse, was put behind bars for his 'key role' as the middle man in the operation.

The 35-year-old of Little Brewery Street, St Clements, Oxford, was described as being the spider at the heart of racket after a special undercover police operation seized more than £500,000 worth of class A drugs.

Cocaine was bought by the five-strong Kingswinford gang for around £35,000 a kilo from the Albanians and sold on for massive profits in drug deals on the streets of the West Midlands.

Uddin, branded the 'spider in the centre of the web', used his criminal cash to rent a 3,000-a-month penthouse in North Oxford and lease high-performance Lamborghinis.

When police officers raided his Scholars Mews apartment in Summertown on October 19 last year, they found about £460,000 in cash bundles, 70 pairs of designer jeans valued each between £500 to £700 and high-value jewellery.

Detectives also seized a 10-tonne hydraulic press used in the production of drugs belonging to Uddin, recovered 40 mobile phones and anti-surveillance equipment.

They also recovered a jacket with a ballistic vest.

Throughout the whole of the case, named Operation Stingray, Thames Valley Police seized more than 10 kilos of cocaine and also found Uddin had arranged the purchase of two handguns, which were found in a shoebox in a VW people carrier.

Uddin was sentenced to 16 years behind bars at Birmingham Crown Court on Tuesday (June 13), after pleading guilty to two counts of conspiracy to supply cocaine and one count of money laundering.

The sentence will run concurrently to a 14-year sentence handed out to him earlier this month at Wolverhampton Crown Court for buying two 9mm pistols which were recovered when detectives swooped on a Kingswinford car park.

Leader of the Kingswinford gang, Craig Davies, aged 29, of Willow Rise, Brierley Hill, was sentenced to 15 years and six months when the group appeared at Birmingham Crown Court in May, while David Stokes, his 31-year-old right-hand man, of Tennyson Way, Kidderminster, was locked up for 14 years and six months.

James Bishop, aged 33, of Vicarage Road, Stourbridge, was given eight years, Jamie Green, aged 36, of Water Street, Kingswinford, got nine years and four months while Callum Bradley, aged 30, of Ashwood Marina, Kingswinford, was jailed for three years and eight months.

At the hearing in May, the court was told that the gang carried out much of their illegal activities in the Stallings Lane area, with the high purity cocaine being smuggled into the United Kingdom from South America through Europe.

It was also heard that meetings were arranged with Albanian couriers to organise cocaine drops, with drugs being delivered on one occasion at the British Oak pub in Kingswinford.