An Albanian drug dealer who posed for pictures surrounded by £250,000 of cash has been allowed to remain in the UK. The Home Office and National Crime Agency (NCA) are seeking to deport Olsi Beheluli, 33, who was jailed for 11 years for his “senior role” in a heroin drug-dealing gang.

Beheluli is accused of lying on his application form for naturalisation after stating that he was not involved in criminality, despite being arrested just eight months later. The organised criminal was arrested with eight kilograms of high-purity heroin with an estimated street value of £200,000, an amount the NCA and the Home Office claim shows his seniority in the gang. The organisations believe that only a person with a long-standing criminal history would be trusted with such a quantity of product.

Beheluli was jailed for 11 years in 2015 (Image: Getty)

Following his arrest, the NCA discovered the photo of Beheluli posing with £250,000 in cash following a series of raids in north-west London in 2015.

He was subsequently sentenced to 11 years in prison after being found guilty of conspiring to supply Class A drugs on April 1, 2015.

However, a lower-tier tribunal judge rejected the claim that the amount of drugs in his possession at the time of his arrest proved his prior participation in criminality.

As a result, his appeal against his deportation was upheld.

This is the latest in a string of bizarre court rulings that have allowed foreign criminals to remain in the UK despite their crimes.

It includes the case of a drug addicted migrant with 42 convictions who won the right to remain in the UK after a judge ruled he would “struggle mentally” if deported to Uganda.

Beheluli arrived in the country in 2000, and his family were granted discretionary leave to remain in 2006.

The Home Office labelled the idea that he was new to crime at the time of his arrest as “incredible” after claiming that he had obtained his citizenship in 2014 fraudulently.

Beheluli was arrested with 8kg of heroin (Image: Getty)

The court was told: “It is beyond logic to accept that he would be trusted with such a consignment of drugs if he was not already involved in the supply of Class A drugs.”

Despite this, the court found in his favour, stating that there was insufficient evidence to prove his prior involvement.

The tribunal ruled: “There is, for example, no surveillance or other evidence from the NCA and there is no opinion evidence from a police officer, for example, to support the suggestion that only a senior and trusted member of an organised criminal gang would be entrusted with such a quantity of drugs.

“There was no evidence of sufficient cogency to establish that the appellant had been involved in criminality at the time that he said that there was nothing adverse to declare about his character.”

But the upper tribunal rejected these arguments and ordered a rehearing. It ruled that the lack of physical evidence did not “amount to a complete and incontrovertible answer to the common-sense point made by the Secretary of State”.

It concluded: “Whether or not there was a statement from a police officer, and whether or not there was further evidence from the NCA, that view was deserving of respect and was capable of supporting the common-sense stance of the Secretary of State.”