Omar Malik headed up a Manchester-based gang that flooded the UK with automatic weapons and import-grade cocaine
Andrew Cooney and Mohammed Omar Malik captured during a police surveillance operation(Image: GMP)
A kingpin who ran one of the UK’s biggest-ever gun-running gangs has lost a high court bid to appeal against his conviction. Omar Malik was at the head of a plot which flooded the country with drugs and weapons.
A ledger kept by Malik, who was said to go by the handle ‘payyabills’ on the encrypted messaging app EncroChat, revealed that over a five month period, his Manchester-based outfit sold up to £70m-worth of drugs. They also supplied organised crime gangs across the country with deadly weapons, including Skorpion sub-machine guns and Grand Power pistols.
A jury heard the gang acquired 49 Grand Power pistols for £147,000 and offered them for sale for between £5,000 and £8,000 each. They also got hold of 52 Skorpion machine guns. By May 2020 at least 48 were sold to criminals for between £9,000 and £15,000 each.
Minshull Street Crown Court heard the gang was ‘among the very highest level of firearm trafficking ever encountered by law enforcement in the UK’. The court heard Malik, formerly of St Mary’s Parsonage, Manchester city centre, made around £52m from the plot.
He was jailed for 38 years in December 2023 after being found guilty of a string of drugs and firearms offences. But now Malik and three of his partners-in-crime have attempted to take their cases to the Appeal Court.
Omar Malik(Image: GMP)
Malik, who gave a no comment interview to police after his arrest, did not give evidence at trial, but his defence said there was insufficient evidence that the ‘payyabills’ handle was his and that the EncroChat data was unreliable because it was incomplete and did not have a ‘verifiable audit trail’. Earlier this month the 40-year-old applied for leave to appeal against his conviction at London’s Court of Appeal.
His barrister Jeremy Dein KC said there were five grounds for appeal including claims that bad character evidence relating to a 2007 conviction for possession of a loaded Russian Tokarev pistol, a shotgun, a pump-action rifle and a sub-machine pistol, should not have been put before the jury; that the judge failed to properly sum Malik’s defence to the jury and that the judge failed to direct the jury not to draw an ‘adverse inference’ from Malik’s failure to answer questions in police interview.
But Appeal Court judges Lady Justice Andrews, Mrs Justice Cutts and Mr Justice Dexter Dias, rejected those arguments and refused Mailk’s appeal bid. In a written judgment they said they found no errors in the judge’s handling of the case adding the evidence against Malik was ‘compelling’.
Four of Malik’s gang also took their cases to the Appeal Court at the same time. Andrew Cooney, 41, formerly of Oakfield Close, Alderley Edge, who was jailed for 27 years after being was found guilty of conspiring to possess firearms or ammunition with intent to endanger life and conspiracy to supply cocaine, was refused leave to appeal against his sentence and conviction.
Sean Hogan, 42, formerly of West Park, Denton, Tameside, who was sentenced to 24 years in prison after being found guilty of conspiring to supply firearms and ammunition with intent to endanger life and being concerned in the supply of cocaine and ketamine was granted extra time to appeal against a concurrent sentence of four years imprisonment for possession of two tasers.
Adrian Gonzalez, formerly of City Road East, Manchester, who was jailed for 25 years after pleading guilty to conspiring to possess firearms with intent to endanger life, and conspiring to supply cocaine, MDMA and amphetamine, saw his appeal against sentence dismissed.
Daniel Waters, 43, formerly of Broom Avenue, Reddish, Stockport, who was jailed for 24 years after being found guilty of conspiring to possess firearms or ammunition with intent to endanger life, also lost a bid to appeal against the length of his sentence.