Brothers who made nearly £2m from drugs agree to pay back £100,000 from illicit cash

Two brothers who made nearly £2m from a huge narcotics conspiracy have had confiscation orders totalling £100,000 made against them.

Raja Arshad, 33, and Murthaza Arshad, 31, from Middlesbrough, agreed to the figures when they appeared at Teesside Crown Court after completing prison sentences.

The pair who lived with their father, a Middlesbrough taxi driver, were jailed in 2008 for a conspiracy involving Class A drugs.

The brothers were part of a major drugs gang jailed for their part in a plan to flood Teesside with heroin.

The high-level network was smashed after a chance sighting of a drug deal. Police later swooped on a home in Oxford Road, Linthorpe in July 2007.

This led officers to a drugs factory on Ayresome Street, a shuttered disused property ideal for avoiding detection.

The raids on the two addresses resulted in the seizure of 11.68kg of heroin worth £1,168,354, as well as cocaine and crack cocaine.

At the time Cleveland Police said it was the biggest haul of heroin the force had recovered.

In 2008 four men were sentenced to a total of 42 years in prison.

Detective Constable Jim Devine said at the time of sentencing: “The recovery is the biggest in Cleveland and clearly the quantities and volumes involved demonstrate that this was an organisation with national, if not international, links.

“It was going to ruin the streets of Middlesbrough and the surrounding areas of the North-east.”

Raja Arshad was jailed for 10 years in 2008, his brother Murthaza 12 years for their part in the conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.

Two other men Amin Younis, then of Brafferton Road, was also jailed for 12 years and Shazad Majid, then of Westbourne Grove, North Ormesby, was jailed for nine years.

At yesterday’s Proceeds of Crime hearing prosecutor Peter Makepeace said the elder Arshad brother’s drugs benefit was put at £916,651 with recoverable assets of £50,079, and Murthaza Arshad’s benefit at £854,671 and the amount available was £53,792.

Mr Makepeace said that in the original case the police recovered £107, 976 and the benefit between them was £103,118.

The police have been holding the cash, and Judge Peter Armstrong ordered that it should be paid over within two weeks.

The brothers, of Oxford Road, Middlesbrough, agreed the prosecution’s figures before the court hearing.