The names and the faces of those at the top of the heap may be ever-changing, but it’s still very much business as usual in the post-Kinahan domestic drugs trade. On Wednesday morning news emerged of a daylong operation carried out by the Garda, which yielded a cocaine seizure valued at €10.6 million.
An analysis of the foiled drug smuggling operation throws up details that are now starting to become familiar – from the smuggling methods to the meticulous planning put in place in a bid to conceal the illicit cargo.
Irish gangs are using front businesses to run smuggling operations that involve landing drugs on remote stretches of coastline. The drugs, mostly cocaine originating in South America, are brought into Irish waters by a large “mother” vessel. Once that ship arrives off the coast, the Irish end of the operation swings into action. Fast boats – usually rigid inflatables – are sent from the shore out to the mother ship to collect the drugs and then return back to the coastline where the haul is landed.
Once ashore, the drugs are quickly taken away, at times by hauliers who are involved in organised crime, or who have been corrupted for the purposes of the smuggling operation.
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In a number of cases when trucks carrying the consignments of cocaine – often valued in excess of €10 million – are intercepted, the vehicles are found to have been modified to include hidden compartments. Access is controlled by hydraulics, the controls for which are available to only a small number of people.
The drugs discovered in the truck stopped on the M9 in Co Kilkenny on Tuesday morning were so well hidden the vehicle had to be taken to Dublin Port to be scanned before the location and structure of the secret compartment could be established. But once they managed to open it, gardaí found 152kg of cocaine inside, in vacuum-packed slabs.
A man in his 60s who was arrested for questioning is from the southeast and is involved in the transport sector. Gardaí believe he was also involved in a failed bid to land drugs on the coastline in another part of the country last year.
The €10.6 million cocaine haul found on Tuesday is linked to the crime gang known as the Family. It had its original base in Ballyfermot, South Dublin, but has now grown into the biggest drug smuggling operation in the Republic, with significant international contacts.
It has emerged as the leading drugs group in the country in the era after the Liam Byrne-run Byrne organised crime group. The Byrne group presided over the Kinahan cartel’s operation in Ireland but was smashed by Garda investigations into the Kinahan-Hutch feud.
