'Businessman' drug dealer found dead in blazing Mercedes

A businessman who used a country club as a front for a drug-dealing operation has been found dead in his blazing Mercedes.

Shokat Chenia had been repeatedly stabbed and left to burn inside the car.

Shocked firemen discovered his body only as they finished damping down the vehicle, which was spotted in flames in a cul-de-sac in Nottingham.

Yesterday detectives were trying to piece together the last hours of the 45-year-old, who was originally from Zambia.

Eight years ago he was jailed after setting up a nine-hole golf club near his home and then hiding £250,000 of drugs around the course.

Police found heroin, cocaine, cannabis, amphetamine and Ecstasy stuffed in ditches and hedgerows and even buried under the turf.

He was exposed after a neighbouring farmer found one of the packages in a hedge while checking his cattle.

Chenia, of Leicester Forest East, was sentenced to 12 years after being convicted at Leicester Crown Court.

At the time he was already serving an eight-year term for fraud offences arising out of the building of the club.

His body was discovered in the early hours of Thursday after his silver Mercedes 320 CLK Elegance was engulfed in a ball of fire in Nottingham.

Police appealed for information about why he was in the city and what connections or contacts he had there.