by Keith Hunt

A drugs conspiracy organiser who fled the country in an attempt to avoid justice has been jailed for five-and-a-half years.

Darren Finch skipped police bail following his arrest in November 2009 and went to South Africa via Spain.

He was arrested in July last year and held for four months at a prison just outside Cape Town which has been categorised as one of the worst in the world, holding around 14,000 inmates.

The father-of-six, of Scragged Oak Road, Detling, Maidstone, was extradited back to the UK and sentenced at Maidstone Crown Court after admitting conspiracy to supply drugs and transferring criminal property of £124,000.

Finch, 40, and several others previously sentenced were arrested after a large-scale police surveillance operation leading to the seizure of more than 100 kilos of skunk cannabis at an industrial unit in South Darenth, near Dartford.

Prosecutor Richard Wormald said Finch was one of the principals in the onward distribution of imported drugs to the north east.

Finch was also caught handing over the £124,000 for drugs to Melvyn Jestin who was jailed in March 2009 for five-and-a-half years after he admitted the conspiracy charge and acquiring criminal property.

Jestin, 67, faced selling his £1 million home Lested Lodge in Plough Wents Road, Chart Sutton, Maidstone, to pay a confiscation order of almost £628,000.

Mr Wormald said the house became a "secondary hub" for the conspiracy with drugs being taken there. Finch was on a par with Jestin in the pecking order.

Finch will face a confiscation hearing, as the prosecution believe he has property in Spain and South Africa.

Alan Walmsley, defending, said the father-of-six left the country when his partner was pregnant. When arrested in South Africa he did not fight extradition.

Passing sentence, Judge Martin Joy said: "You have to understand, as everybody has to understand, that supplying and importing drugs is a scourge in society.

"Those who involve themselves in the distribution of such drugs, particularly skunk cannabis, commit an extremely serious offence.

"It is an utterly degrading habit and undermines the good order of society. Only severe punishment can be expected."

More than 10 months spent in custody will count towards the sentence.