A drugs baron, who smuggled multi-million pound shipments of cocaine into the UK through Poole, has been jailed for 30 years.

In the 1990s crime boss Brian Wright, 60, reigned over a huge international drug smuggling empire, which customs officers claim was "probably the most sophisticated and successful global cocaine trafficking organisation ever to target the UK".

His gang used luxury yachts to ship tons of cocaine from Venezuela into British waters, where their cargo was unloaded onto smaller boats and smuggled into Poole, in a process known as coopering.

The gang had safe houses in Ringwood and Christchurch where the blocks of cocaine were hidden until they could be distributed.

In 1998 they hatched a plan to swamp the south coast of England with the deadly drug. The yacht Ramarch, from the Lymington area, was hired for coopering drugs from a flotilla of three boats carrying massive shipments of cocaine from South America.

The yacht's crew stayed in caravans at Rockley Park while it test-sailed the Ramarch and a small skiff and carried out reconnaisance to identify any law enforcement patrols.

At the end of August the Ramarch sailed from Poole into the English Channel at night and met with the first of the three yachts just off the coast of Studland Bay, where it picked up 600kg of cocaine.

So many blocks of cocaine were unloaded in the next few days the gang had to use every cupboard in the safe house in Ringwood and all the loft space. The gang then attempted to hide their traces, returning the Ramarch to its marina and another yacht to Cobb's Quay in Poole.

Wright fled to Cyprus in 1999 when his empire started to collapse, but he was not arrested until 2005 when he went to Spain.

He was well-known in horse racing circles and rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous, including comedian Jim Davidson who was called to testify in his trial.

The 11-year investigation resulted in 12 convictions across the world.

Lymington's Harbourmaster Ryan Willegers said he was not aware of any problems with smuggling in the area, but admitted it is a difficult place to police.

"The reality is that in most of the small harbours up and down the coast the controls are really fairly limited.

"If we see something suspicious we report it, but it's not as if there's a customs route for every boat that comes through the harbour.

"HM Customs and the police are on the water and they will keep an eye out, and the reality is that they are spread fairly thinly throughout the ports."

But customs officers told the Daily Echo that the South Coast is no more at risk than any other part of the UK.

"To successfully combat any kind of smuggling operation we use state of the art technology and intelligence," a spokesman said.

"This includes risk assessed targeting and deploying a modern cutter fleet around the UK coastline."