A fancy lunch at a plush city centre restaurant brought a criminal empire of an 'untouchable' international drugs gang crashing down. The gang, who used a greengrocer business as a front, were unmasked after meeting in a top Liverpool city centre restaurant, a court heard. The four kingpins behind the massive trafficking network - global drugs lords Kevin Hanley and his Greek girlfriend Chrysi Minadaki, along with fellow crooks Richard Harrison and Matthew Edward - were responsible for importing and peddling huge volumes of super-strength cocaine and heroin. Join the Manchester Evening News WhatsApp group HERE But their downfall began when they were observed meeting together by surveillance teams at Restaurant Bar and Grill on the city's Brunswick Street, which proved to be a eureka moment that enabled the National Crime Agency (NCA) and Police Scotland to piece together a huge conspiracy, the ECHO reports. It was the first time the four had been seen together, which enabled officers in Scotland and England who had unwittingly been trailing the cartel's two wings separately, to unmask one vast crime empire. A covert agent who led the probe for the NCA said: "We had been following Hanley and his girlfriend Minadaki for some time, while our counterparts in Scotland had their eyes on Edward, whom they suspected of being a major player in the drugs market, and Harrison, who was his fixer. "Our surveillance brought us both independently to the bar in Liverpool, and it was the first time we realised the link between the two parties. It was a eureka moment where the two investigations suddenly became one. "They all thought they were untouchable but their coming together in Liverpool that day proved to be the catalyst to their downfall. By working together, we managed to take out the whole lot." The surveillance operatives listened as the gang held discussions over lunch at the top bar, which recently featured in BBC crime drama This City is Ours, with CCTV cameras capturing them as they strolled away afterwards before getting into a taxi. The breakthrough that afternoon – on November 13 2012 – enabled the NCA and Police Scotland to establish that Edwards and Harrison were customers of Hanley, who boasted of links to South American cartels, and Minadaki, who supplied lorries and fruit as cover for drug importations despite posturing as a TV presenter and radio owner in her homeland. Officers also gathered additional intelligence that Harrison and Edward, from Glasgow, were arranging a shipment of heroin worth £8m from the continent through Minadaki, who had promised them a cut-price deal on two tonnes of cocaine if they agreed to the importation. Acting on a tip-off from the NCA, Italian police found 35kg of heroin concealed in a consignment of breadsticks when they stopped a Scottish lorry travelling from Greece in Bari on November 24. As officers began to dismantle the gang, Hanley and Minadaki laid low in Greece. They were eventually staked out in July 2013 by undercover officers who knew that the rugby-loving crook would not be able to resist leaving his Athens bolt-hole to watch the British and Irish Lions play Australia. They swooped as Hanley took his seat to watch the game in an Irish bar. Brendan Foreman, NCA regional head of investigations, explained: "For all the high-end technology we used to narrow down the search for Hanley, it was good old fashioned policing that led us to the bar in Greece. We knew his love of rugby made him vulnerable and that he wouldn't be able to resist coming out of hiding to watch a crucial Lions match." Following his extradition from Greece, Hanley appeared at the Old Bailey in London, where the court heard he smuggled cocaine worth £5m in consignments of watermelons and pomegranates. The court heard he had a source of cocaine in Venezuela and used his right-hand man John Fowler's wholesale fruit and vegetable business in London's Covent Garden as a front to bring the drugs into Britain via Greece. There were also plans to use strawberries, cauliflower, and broccoli when the police foiled the gang's plot. The court heard Lieutenant Fowler's flat in Chelsea was raided; they found £2.5m of cocaine, £200,000 of amphetamines, £61,000 of skunk cannabis, more than £2m in cash and two counting machines. The Guardian reported that Minadaki and Fowler were told in court that they had lied repeatedly in an attempt to heap blame on Hanley. Judge Wendy Joseph KC told Minadaki she had enjoyed a 'glittering career in the Greek media, but by mid-2011 things were going less well'. She added: "Hanley could not have done what he did on the scale that he did without your help. "You lied from the beginning, claiming to have been a vulnerable victim of grooming by Hanley, but that can't be the case - you are no naïve girl but a hard-headed businesswoman who did nothing you did not willingly choose to do." The same judge told Hanley: "To spell out the harrowing misery [of drug dealing], it's not just the lives of the users, but the misery caused to the families of the users and the victims of the crimes committed in order that drugs can be purchased." The court heard Hanley had previously been a key lieutenant of Brian Brendan Wright, known as 'the milkman' because he always delivered. Hanley was jailed for 15 years alongside his mentor in 2001, but within months of his release and his licence expiring in 2010, he quickly fell back into his criminal ways. Hanley and Minadaki were both jailed for 17 years for drug supply offences. Fowler received a 16-year prison sentence. Harrison had previously served time for laundering drug money in property projects and was caged for four years in 2007. Upon his release, he became an associate of Scottish kingpin Edward and acted as his middleman in drug trades with other syndicates. Harrison was seen as a key link between Edward and Hanley as they sought to import large amounts of cocaine and heroin. He was sentenced to nine years behind bars, and Edwards was caged for 12 years at a court in Glasgow in November 2013 over the intercepted heroin importation. But they were handed additional sentences of five-and-a-half years and six years, ten months, respectively, after admitting conspiracy to supply cocaine. Prosecutors said the evidence indicated that Harrison and Edward had been "supplied on a large scale" by Hanley. Mr Foreman from the NCA said: "This was the disruption of an international crime network that truly spanned the globe."