The alleged right-hand man in a £1.6billion conspiracy to smuggle drugs into the UK using fake Dutch ambulances claimed he was only there to fix the lights.

Leonardus Bijlsma said he fixed a broken ambulance heater at an industrial lock-up in Colchester, where prosecutors alleged packets of drugs were loaded or unloaded.

The 56-year-old claimed he fixed a broken interior light when the same ambulance turned up at the hotel he was staying, on a separate occasion.

Asked what he was doing at the Holiday Inn, in Eight Ash Green, the father-of-four said: “There was a light that was broken and I needed to fix it.”

Bijlsma is accused of being the right-hand man in a criminal conspiracy to bring in large quantities of drugs into the UK.

Bijlsma yesterday told Birmingham Crown Court he was paid 250 euros a time by ambulance company owner Olof Schoon to be his co-driver on 16 tripsfrom Holland.

The Dutchman said Schoon had sleep apnoea and could fall asleep driving, so took Bijlsma as a back-up driver.

He is on trial alongside another man charged with drug smuggling after an ambulance with riveted secret compartments was found “rammed” full of £38million in cocaine and heroin in June.

Prosecution counsel Robert Davies said police had found Bijlsma’s DNA on a rivet gun and gloves found in the back of that ambulance.

Bijlsma told the court as the Dutch ambulance yard’s handyman he was never allowed in the back of the vehicle.

He told jurors after washing the ambulance wearing some gloves, he “put them on a cupboard” back in the Netherlands where lots of staff would have access to them.

Bijlsma claimed his DNA was on the rivet gun, found inside one of the concealed compartments, because he had been to the shop to buy it.

He told the court his “boss and friend” Schoon – who the prosecution claim was “the central player” in the conspiracy – paid him up to 4,000 euro a month for his services as a one-day-a-week odd-job man.

The jury has been told Schoon and another man, Richard Engelsbel, have admitted conspiracy to supply class A drugs into the UK.

Bijlsma and co-defendant Dennis Vogelaar, both of Amsterdam, deny conspiracy to smuggle drugs.

Bijlsma claimed he had no idea there were drugs in the ambulance and had no part in smuggling.

The prosecution has alleged Bijlsma and Vogelaar were part of a four-man team equipped with bogus paramedics uniforms, medical transfer paperwork used as a cover to smuggle the drugs.

When National Crime Agency officers stripped the ambulance they discovered parcels of 193kgs of cocaine worth £30million, 74kgs heroin worth £8million and ecstasy tablets and crystal worth £60,000 concealed behind metal rivet panels.

l The trial continues.