Brian Charrington (born 1956) is an English drug trafficker and owner of a car dealership in Middlesbrough who, along with Curtis "Cocky" Warren, operated in North East England during the late-1980s and eventually built a criminal empire with links to Germany, France, Spain and Austria as well as connections in South America and the United States.
Despite Charrington's status as an informant for the North-East Regional Crime Squad, customs officials went forward with their prosecution despite protests from his "handlers" Harry Knaggs and Ian Weedon.
Although British authorities were unable to bring him to trial in Manchester on his involvement in the smuggling of cocaine worth an estimated £150 million, Britain's security forces - who admitted he was their "supergrass" on Colombian cartels - re-homed him in Australia where his visa was revoked shortly after his arrival.
Traveling to Spain, he resided at the Costa Blanca resort in Calpe and later, from a fortified villa, laundered millions of pounds which he used to bring hashish from Morocco across the border which he continued to sell.
Following his release in 2006, he was extradited to France to serve a two-year prison term after 650 kilos of hashish were found in his possession on his yacht in the English Channel in 1995.