A gang of 12 drug-dealers who used a cottage owned by actress Miriam Margolyes to drop-off millions of pounds of cocaine, have been jailed.

The gangsters hired Dutch pilots to make deviated charted flights from the Harry Potter star’s Dover holiday home to cottages in Waltham Abbey, Kent and Buckinghamshire.

Liverpool Crown Court heard heard how the group also supplied an organised crime group in the North East with drugs estimated around £17m ($22m).

Between December 2015 and April 2016, 500kg (1,100lb) of Class A drugs were brought in by gang who were all jailed on Friday, July 26.

The group used Ms Margoyles holiday home Gun Emplacement Cottage as their main base, there is no suggestion the actress knew anything about the activities.

Jailing the gang Judge Sophie McKone said ringleader Lance Kennedy, 32, arranged for the drugs to be brought in by helicopter "for supply... throughout the UK but particularly the North East and Scotland".

As well as using helicopters the "sophisticated" gang also used vehicles with hidden compartments including an Audi A6 - which could flip the rear seats down with the cigarette lighter.

She said the gang "cynically reaped the rewards" of the drugs operation - said to have a street value far greater than the wholesale value of £17m - "all out of greed".

"It is selfishness beyond contemplation." she added.

Kyra Badman, prosecuting, told the court the gang had employed a cash counter, Steven Maddocks, to count and launder the vast amounts of cash generated by the wholesale supply of drugs.

She said the defendants communicated via encrypted mobile phones also dropped off by the helicopter pilots.

Miss Badman said the plot was foiled by Cleveland Police investigating the activities of an associate who was a member of an organised crime gang.

The ringleader Lance Kennedy, of no fixed address, was extradited to face justice - along with another gang member Robert Stewart - after fleeing to Thailand.

They were arrested trying to enter the Ukraine from Moldova.

Kennedy, who admitted conspiracy to supply drugs, was sentenced to 18 years and four months in jail.

Stewart, also of no fixed address, was given a prison sentence of 13 years and eight months after pleading guilty to the same offence.

Money counter Maddocks, 32, of Platt Grove, Rock Ferry, Wirral, who admitted money laundering, was jailed for four years.

Other gang members received sentences for conspiracy to supply ranging from 14 years three months to eight years eight months in jail.