A FORMER Derbyshire kickboxer has been jailed for nine years after admitting trying to smuggled £2m of cocaine and ecstasy into the country.
A van driven by Paul Mitchelson was stopped by the Border Agency in France as he was travelling back to the UK from the continent.
Inside, hidden behind panels, were 11kg of cocaine, more than 50,000 ecstasy tables and a further 23kg of powdered ecstasy.
The 39-year-old, of Mill Street, Coton-in-the-Elms, near Swadlincote, pleaded guilty to importing cocaine and MDMA at Maidstone Crown Court, where he was handed the nine-year jail term.
A spokesman for the National Crime Agency, which led the investigation, said: "The drugs have a collective street value of more than £2 million.
"Mitchelson was stopped at on May 28 by Border Force officers at the UK Control Zone of the Channel Tunnel, in Coquelles, France.
"He was driving a VW Crafter TDi Van and said he was returning from Belgium where he had been to view a classic 1976 Porsche car on behalf of a third party."
The spokesman said: "Officers searched the van and three screws from the offside interior panel were removed revealing three packages.
Malcolm Bragg, from the National Crime Agency's Border Policing Command, said: "Drugs destroy communities and Mitchelson had no regard for the misery and damage they would have caused."
