THREE men from Bournemouth and Poole have been jailed after trying to smuggle a haul of cocaine worth more than £41 million into the UK on a private jet from Colombia.

In what was celebrated as one of the largest busts of its kind, they men were were stopped at Hampshire's Farnborough Airport with half a tonne of the drug in 15 suitcases after flying in from Bogota.

Martin Neil, 49 and of Bournemouth Road, Poole, Italian national Alessandro Iembo, 28 and of Richmond Chambers, Bournemouth, and Spaniard Victor Franco-Lorenzo, 40 and of Suffolk Road, Bournemouth, were each convicted of one count of fraudulent evasion of a prohibition in relation to a class A controlled drug, between October 30 and January 30.

Each has been sentenced to 24 years in prison.

Jose Ramon Miguelez-Botas, 56 and of Valladolid in Spain, was also convicted of the same offence by a jury at Woolwich Crown Court. He was sentenced to 20 years.

Neil's brother Stephen Neil, 53, also of Poole, was found not guilty of the same charge after the jury deliberated for more than 13 hours.

Border officials discovered the stash on January 29, but police believe the racket may have been successful once before in 2017.

The men took off from Luton on a private jet costing £138,500 on January 26 and headed for South America.

When they returned, officials searched past a few dirty clothes in their suitcases to find some 513 blocks of cocaine with a purity of around 79 per cent. The total weight was about 500kg.

The wholesale value was £15,390,000 but the cocaine could be sold for more than £41 million on the street, prosecutors said.

Profit, despite the luxury mode of transport, could have been more than £15 million.

Iembo, Martin Neil and Franco-Lorenzo made an initial three-day trip to Bogota, in December.

A woman booked the private jet under the guise of the men being "leaders in the field of cryptocurrency". The defendants said they would be meeting US singer Bruno Mars in Colombia as part of their work in the music industry.

A chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce Phantom was arranged to collect them when they returned to Farnborough on December 11.

They brought back a number of suitcases on that trip, but none were searched.

Lawyers for the Neils said the pair had been "deceived", believing they were off to Colombia to help with charity work.

Sentencing the convicted men, Judge Philip Shorrock said the "serious and commercial operation" nearly succeeded in bringing an "enormous haul" of the class A drug into Britain.

He conceded they were not the masterminds, but they all played a "crucial part" and hoped to succeed in walking away with a "substantial" amount of money.

The judge told Miguelez-Botas he got a lesser sentence because his lack of participation in the earlier trip showed he played less of a role in the planning of the foiled operation.

Celebrating the bust at the time, NCA operations manager Siobhan Micklethwaite said it was "one of the largest flown into the UK by plane in many years"