A man who had a vital role in a £12m dirty money operation has been jailed for four and a half years.
Ronald Russell was snared after a Turkish lorry driver was stopped for a random search at the Port of Felixstowe in Suffolk on 30th March, 2023.
Almost £230,000 was discovered stuffed inside a mattress within the cab of the vehicle.
Russell’s palm print was later found on a £20 note among the cash haul.
The 47-year-old was also linked to a piece of paper with handwritten notes found inside the HGV.
This eventually led to a raid at Russell’s home in Linwood, Renfrewshire, by Police Scotland and the National Crime Agency.
He was found attempting to flush incriminating evidence down the toilet.
Russell today returned to the High Court in Glasgow after admitting a charge of being involved in serious organised crime.
Lady Hood reduced the jail term from six years and nine months due to the guilty plea.
The judge told Russell: “You were made redundant and struggled to find employment.
“When it was suggested that, for personal profit, you should record the movement of money, you agreed despite stating — in a pre-sentencing report — that it was obvious it was not legal.
“You said, very frankly, that you did not really care.
“It seems your account of the offending was, at times, evasive and contradictory.
“You did, in hindsight, express some remorse.”
A hearing earlier heard how the lorry driver had been halted by UK Border Force officials.
The swoop at Russell’s home occurred almost a year later, on March 20, 2024.
He asked who was at his door and, when told it was police, raced back upstairs.
Russell’s partner eventually let officers in.
Prosecutor Lindsey Dalziel told the court: “Russell was found in the main bathroom kneeling by the toilet with his arm inside the bowl.
“He was trying to dispose of pieces of paper from an A4 notepad at his side.
“A total of 26 pieces of damaged paper in the form of ledger notes were retrieved from the U-bend.”
The notes were dried and seized along with the pad.
Miss Dalziel said: “The papers documented the movement of large-scale cash covering the period March 20, 2023, to March 19, 2024.”
She added that the handwriting matched notes found in the Turkish trucker’s lorry.
The ledger papers discovered in Russell’s home had columns marked “in”, “out” and “totals”.
There were also references to payments being made to “Shug” — an alias for Russell.
Miss Dalziel said the total money marked as moving “in” was £11,890,649.
The “out” column totalled £11,186,649.
She added: “Russell accepts that he included a ‘wage’ of £42,210 paid to himself under the name ‘Shug’ between March 2023 and March 2024.
“This was in various instalments, averaging around £4,000.”
The notes revealed handovers of cash ranging between £100,000 and £465,000.
Other items were found at Russell’s property, including more than £50,000 in cash and mobile phones.
Photos on one of the devices appeared to show £164,000 and then £196,000 tied up and packaged in his bedroom.
There was also an image of a cash-counting machine next to a large amount of banknotes.
Describing text messages, the Advocate Depute told the hearing:
“There were frequent exchanges showing that Russell was counting money and querying discrepancies.”
It is not known if the cash mentioned is linked to any other “commodity”, such as drugs.
Sentencing Russell, Lady Hood added: “You handled a vast amount of cash over a sustained period.
“You did so for substantial personal gain and gave no thought to the impact on others in doing so.”