'You got enough to kill someone only need one in right place': Manchester gangsters' gun and drugs supplier jailed for nearly two decades

A man who supplied guns to organised crime groups across the UK including in Manchester has been jailed for more than 19 years. Using the encrypted communications platform EncroChat, Michael Derrane, 50, orchestrated, supplied and transferred firearms and multiple kilos of class A and B drugs wholesale, selling them on to criminals for a profit.

Derrane, who used the handle "Big Corey", was well known to serious organised crime groups in Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, the Midlands, and London and would travel up to 700 miles to exchange illicit goods. In one series of messages he discussed the sale of 30 kilos of heroin split between locations in London, Leicester and Oxford.

Today (1 March) at Leeds Crown Court, he was sentenced to 19 years and two months imprisonment after he had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transfer prohibited weapons (firearms) and conspiracy to supply class A and B drugs namely heroin, cocaine and cannabis.

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The National Crime Agency launched an investigation in 2020 as part of Operation Venetic – the UK law enforcement response to the takedown of encrypted global communications service EncroChat.

On April 22 2020, Derrane was arrested in his van in the Tingley area of Leeds by NCA armed officers on suspicion of firearms and drugs offences. During a search of the van officers recovered a firearm that had been converted to fire fully automatic, as well as ammunition, class B drugs and £6000 cash.

On July 2nd 2020, Alsi Vata, 26, who had conspired with Derrane to buy this and other firearms, was detained by NCA officers in the presence of the former Home Secretary, Priti Patel - who had asked to