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<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="https://www.suffolkgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/farmer-french-brandy-1024x507.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-10595"/><figcaption>Ooh la la</figcaption></figure></div>
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<p><strong>By Hugh Dunnett, Crime Correspondent</strong></p>
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<p><strong>A farmer has been caught setting up an elaborate operation to smuggle French brandy into Britain after Brexit.</strong></p>
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<p>Maurice Piper, a potato farmer outside Orford in Suffolk, devised a cunning plan to beat new customs regulations and pipe the delicious spirit under the sea.</p>
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<p></p>
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<p>Cops raided the farm and found enough stashed piping to reach Calais. Paperwork found in the farmhouse confirmed they had smashed a <g class="gr_ gr_4 gr-alert gr_spell gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim ContextualSpelling multiReplace" id="4" data-gr-id="4">multi-million pound</g> smuggling operation.</p>
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<p>Suffolk Police worked closely with Customs and Excise on so-called Operation Cognac after an initial tip-off from the pipe wholesalers, who became suspicious about the amount of pipe Piper purchased.</p>
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<p>Customs' chief investigator for East Anglia, Lorraine Fisher, 34, said: "We were expecting a rise in smuggling operations after Brexit.</p>
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<p>"But this is by far the most well-planned operations we have smashed. Mr Piper's operation, which had been clothed in a jacket of secrecy for months, has now been mashed."</p>
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<p>Mr Piper had linked up with a French farmer in Northern France, Madame Charlotte Desiree. He had hired a trawler to lay the cabling for 200 miles from under the North Sea near Orford down the east coast and across the Channel to France.</p>
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<p>[AdSense-B]</p>
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<p>Madame Desiree's gang would then pump hundreds of gallons of French brandy through the Piper's piping, where it would then be hoarded in a huge barn before being sold on for a huge profit.</p>
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<p>A spokesman for Suffolk Police said: "England would have been flooded with contraband spirit, costing the country a small fortune in lost duties.</p>
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<p>"We acknowledge there may be some difficulty getting goods across from France after Brexit, but we advise people not to set up their own smuggling networks.</p>
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<p>"This is not the 18th century."</p>
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<p>[AdSense-C]</p>
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