THE MAN who was rescued from choppy seas in which €440 million worth of cocaine was found floating claimed yesterday that he was pushed into the craft during a row after he went to assist a friend who claimed he had got into difficulty while fishing.
Martin Wanden (45) told how he went out to Dunlough Bay near Mizen Head in west Cork after getting a phone call from a friend, Charlie Goldie, saying he had run out of petrol while fishing and asking him to get a spare rigid inflatable boat kept at Kilcrohane Pier and to come and help him.
Mr Wanden, of no fixed abode, and his co-accused Joe Daly, of Carrisbrooke Ave, Bexley, Kent; and Perry Wharrie, of Pyrles Lane, Loughton, Essex, all deny charges of possessing cocaine for sale or supply at Dunlough Bay on July 2nd last year.
Mr Wanden told the court that when he arrived at the boat containing Mr Goldie and two other men, he spotted boxes on board and realised something was wrong. He told them he didn’t want to get involved and wanted to be dropped ashore immediately.
“The sea was very choppy. It was that bad that I was going to turn around. It was only that I could see them that I kept going. There were three in the boat: Charlie Goldie, Mr Hagan whom I didn’t know and whom I still don’t know, and another man,” he said.
“I don’t remember any seats – all I can remember are the boxes and I said, ‘Charlie, what’s going on here?’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with you, don’t worry. We just need to get petrol.”
Mr Wanden, under cross- examination by Tom Creed SC, for the prosecution, said that during the argument about what they were going to do, he was pushed into the boat with the drugs .
“There was an argument, a lot of conflict and I was more or less pushed into the other [boat] – bearing in mind there are millions of pounds of stuff, we’re not having a debate about it . . . It was more a shove, ‘Get on then’, and then they were gone,” he said.
Mr Wanden said he asked Mr Goldie and the other man to drop him to shore but they refused, saying if they went into the cove they would not be able to back the boat out.
“I could have gone with them if I wanted to be part of this. I don’t know where they were going. They could have been going further out to sea and I didn’t want anything to do with this . . . This all happened in the space of a minute and I was soaking and sick from the sea.”
Asked by Mr Creed if it was just an unfortunate coincidence that he found himself charged with drug offences, Mr Wanden said that was “an understatement”. When asked whose fault it was, he replied, “I blame Charles Goldie.”
Mr Wanden said his fingerprint had been found on the seating of a boat found at Lettermore near Kilcrohane because he helped Charlie Goldie and others remove the boat from a four-wheel drive vehicle when he went there to collect a fishing rod from Mr Goldie.
He also acknowledged having two false passports as he could no longer use his own passport because of a civil matter.
The trial continues.
