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A notorious British drug trafficker, once ranked among Europe’s top ten most investigated criminals, has died on the Costa Blanca while awaiting a Spanish prison sentence. Brian Colin Charrington, aged 68, passed away in the early hours at the Marina Baixa Regional Hospital in La Vila Joiosa.

 

Charrington, with links to infamous international cocaine baron Curtis Warren, was awaiting the outcome of a legal bid to have his eight year, five month prison term delayed on health grounds. This sentence related to a 2013 drug raid at his El Albir property in l’Alfàs del Pi, Alicante, where Spanish authorities seized 192 kilos of cocaine. His lawyer had formally requested that the term be suspended due to illness.

 

Spanish police once described him as “leader of an international gang of drug smugglers” and noted he was among the ten most hunted criminals in Europe. They traced his operations to luxury villas across the province, including Calpe and Altea, used to smuggle drugs such as hashish from Morocco and cocaine from South America.

 

Born in Middlesbrough, Charrington began life as a car dealer but soon amassed a fortune that included a private jet, yachts and a fleet of luxury vehicles. His wealth was estimated at £20 million in 2011.

 

During the 1980s, he teamed up with Warren to traffic cocaine from Venezuela to the UK. Their 1992 arrest followed the discovery of over 900 kilos of cocaine hidden in a shipment of lead ingots. However, the case fell apart after it emerged Charrington had been acting as a police informant.

 

He later served time in Germany and France: in 2003 he was sentenced to seven years in Germany for cocaine smuggling and in 2006 received a two year sentence in France for a 1995 yacht based hashish haul. In Spain, a previous trial related to a 2013 bust was thrown out on procedural grounds, but a retrial led to his final conviction this year.

 

Nicknamed “the Wikipedia drug trafficker”, Charrington always denied writing the now-infamous Wikipedia entry that described him as a key figure in international drug smuggling. He claimed the page was a smear campaign by British authorities designed to discredit him.

 

Spain’s Supreme Court largely upheld his conviction but agreed to reduce his sentence due to significant delays in the legal process. At the time of his death, the court had not yet ruled on a separate appeal submitted by his lawyer on health grounds.

 

Swiss-born son Ray Charrington, also a defendant in the 2013 case, shared a tribute on social media late last night: “RIP Dad. You weren’t just my father. You were a living legend.”

 

With his death, Spanish courts will formally declare the extinction of criminal responsibility in this matter, ending one of Europe’s longest-running drug crime sagas.

 

 

Image: policia.es