LONDON, May 26 — A British man has been jailed for 18 years for trying to smuggle two tonnes of cocaine into the UK aboard a luxury yacht, the National Crime Agency said on Thursday.

Andrew Cole, 33, was arrested in September along with five Nicaraguans aboard the Kahu yacht off the southern English coast, having picked up the drugs from another vessel that sailed from Suriname.

The cocaine was worth around £160 million (RM885 million).

A court in Exeter, southwest England, was told that Cole had travelled to Costa Rica, Panama, Miami and Barbados to plan the operation before the Jamaican-flagged Kahu sailed.

Another vessel was due to meet the Kahu in the Channel and take delivery of the drugs.

Five other men, the captain and four crew members, were acquitted by a jury.

Messages sent from Cole's mobile phone on the yacht included "making you proud boss" and then "We are getting boarded".

An unread reply said: "Throw satphones what you use. Throw all phones. Did you copy, throw all phones."

The NCA said it intercepted the yacht 80 miles (130 kilometres) off the coast of Plymouth after receiving evidence gleaned from a sting operation by the Australian Federal Police, who participated in the raid.

Australian police and the FBI last year revealed they had carried out a sensational operation persuading criminal networks to use supposedly encrypted phones called ANOM that were in fact copying messages to the law enforcement authorities. — AFP