A North-East drugs baron may be exchanging his millionaire lifestyle for a French prison cell.

Former Teesside second-hand car dealer Brian Charrington, 44, has been ordered by a court in Spain to be extradited to France - and a possible two years behind bars.

His legal defence team has lodged an appeal against extradition, ordered by Spain's National Criminal Court.

The hearing is expected before Easter.

Three judges who heard the extradition case in Madrid last month granted the French request yesterday to send him to Boulogne, where he was sentenced - in his absence two years ago - to two years imprisonment for attempting to smuggle 1,655kg of hashish.

In August 1995, French Customs stormed a yacht in the English Channel and seized the assignment of drugs.

Charrington was convicted of being the man behind the shipment.

Charrington, who used to live in Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough, owns two aeroplanes and a string of luxury cars, and keeps Cayman alligators in a pool at his security-protected villa.

He left Britain after a 1993 court case in the North-East which followed the seizure of an illegal shipment of £150m-worth of Colombian cocaine.

The prosecution offered no evidence against Charrington, and a Cleveland Police investigation was launched into the collapse of the case.

At Bristol Crown Court in 1999, Charrington was described as the mastermind behind a £14.5m drugs haul.

The case was dropped after the judge directed that Customs had failed to abide by international law when boarding the boat which was carrying the drugs