Curtis 'Cocky' Warren, who owns property in Bulgaria, has been jailed for 13 years after he and five members of his gang were convicted last October of a plot to smuggle GBP 1 M of cannabis into Jersey.

Warren, who is one of the richest men in Britain and owns an undisclosed number of properties in Bulgaria as well as 300 houses in his home town Liverpool, was sentenced Thursday.

Warren started off as a small-time street dealer in Liverpool, and went on to build a massive drugs empire, amassing millions of pounds along the way. He was arrested in 1996 in his house in the Netherlands after millions of GBP worth of cocaine were found in Rotterdam and traced to him, the UK Times newspaper reported.

Warren was jailed previously in 1996 after an investigation carried out by the Dutch authorities, which suggested he owned a winery in Bulgaria, from where he shipped cocaine

Warren planned to suspend the cocaine in Bulgarian red wine, ship it to Liverpool and liberate it from the liquid using a chemical extraction process. But the plan was foiled.

In 1996, the Dutch police - who had been eavesdropping on his mobile phone calls - intercepted 400kg of cocaine.

The Dutch court sentenced Warren to 12 years and he was to receive a further four years after being convicted of the manslaughter of a Turkish fellow prisoner after a fight in the exercise yard in 1999.

Warren served two-thirds of his sentence on both counts, a total of ten years and eight months.