Four men have been jailed for trying to smuggle almost £1.5 million in cash out of the UK in sacks of chicken feed.

Polish nationals Mariusz Ancygier, 28, and Mariusz Maciag, 38, were stopped by Border Force officers at the Channel Tunnel terminal in Folkestone in November 2015.

Their van was searched and officers found vacuum sealed packets of note inside the sacks of feed, which were allegedly destined for a zoo in Poland.

The total cash recovered was £980,000 and both men were arrested on suspicion of possessing criminal property.

Eight days later another van destined for the same zoo was stopped at the Folkestone terminal with animal feed inside.

Cash worth £500,000 was found inside the sacks, which had been opened and glued back together.

The van’s occupants, Adam Grobelny, 32, and Marcin Nowaczyk, 29, were arrested.

Prosecutor Tony Prosser said the four men were linked because they were allegedly taking the food from Kelvedon Hatch in Esssex to a small zoo called Zoo Farma in Laczna in Poland.

He said: “But there were also telephone numbers linking the two pairs of defendants with a further individual, who may have been behind the cash smuggling operation.”

Ancygier and Maciag claimed they were just taking the animal food to the zoo and had no idea the money was stashed inside.

Grobelny and Nowaczyc, who were travelling in the second truck, claimed they were stopped in England and asked to take the cash to Poland.

The prosecutor added: “Since it was obviously being smuggled, the cash was seized by the Border Force and to date, no one has made a claim that they were the legitimate owner of this cash - the only logical explanation is it was the proceeds of somebody’s criminal activities.”

He said that checks with the Essex company revealed the first van took six hours to make the journey to Folkestone.

And when officials checked the men’s mobile phones, all the SIM cards had either disappeared or been torn up, he said.

The four denied the charges.

NCA investigators were able to piece together their movements before the seizure, showing that they had stopped between collecting the feed in Essex and driving to the tunnel terminal to collect the cash.

They were also able to discover that Maciag had been in vehicles carrying large amounts of cash before, once in Germany, once in Wales and previously at the tunnel.

All four men were found guilty on Tuesday this week following a two week trial at Canterbury Crown Court. Ancygier and Maciag were each sentenced to seven years in prison, while Grobelny and Nowaczyk received two years each.

National Crime Agency Dover branch operations manager Mark Harding said: "Organised crime groups rely on money launderers like these men to allow them to benefit from their crime and re-invest their criminal profits.

“Not only have we taken a considerable sum of cash out of the hands of criminal networks, we have taken a group of money launderers out of that chain.This makes it more difficult for criminals trying to clean their dirty cash.”

Paul Morgan, director of Border Force South East and Europe added: "Border Force officers play a crucial role in preventing drugs, contraband or the proceeds of crime from crossing our border, and where our officers suspect that cash may be linked with criminal activity, we have the power to seize it."