A drugs gang were undone by their own bungling, writes Barry Roche, in Cork.
IT MAY not have been said in jest but when prosecution counsel Tom Creed SC quoted Oliver Hardy's line that "this is another fine mess you've got me into", he may well have articulated the thoughts of the three men convicted in the State's biggest drugs seizure.
All three, Martin Wanden, Perry Wharrie and Joe Daly, must surely have pondered and rued the moment when one of the gang put diesel in the petrol engines of their drug-laden Rib, causing the engines to stall and their plan to import €440 million worth of cocaine to unravel with disastrous consequences.
Although the operation was investigated with a forensic level of detail by gardaí after customs recovered the drugs, the fact remains that a major English drugs gang might never have been caught but for their bungled efforts to bring the drugs ashore in worsening weather conditions.
In some respects, the gang displayed tremendous professionalism and attention to detail. In others, they adopted a cavalier attitude which left a rich trail of clues which investigating gardaí seized upon with relish to piece together a compelling case against the three accused.
The background to the story - or at least what can be reported of it prior to sentencing today - is relatively straightforward.
A major drugs shipment was brought from Venezuela to Barbados where it was collected by a catamaran, the Lucky Day, crewed by two Lithuanians.
They were joined on board by Gerard Hagan for the transatlantic voyage and by the time they left Barbados in late May, the drugs gang had already rented two properties on the Sheep's Head peninsula in west Cork under the guise of English tourists on a fishing holiday.
One member of the gang had already come over earlier in the year when, on January 16th, 2007, he bought a mobile phone in Bantry and registered in the name of Steven Witsey - one of two aliases used by Martin Wanden, who also called himself Anthony Linden.
That phone was to prove crucial to the State's case. It was later discovered by customs officers in a watertight Pele box found on board the gang's Rib as it lay semi-submerged amid the 62 bales of cocaine floating in choppy seas in Dunlough Bay.
The phone enabled gardaí to establish a pattern of contacts with phone numbers in the UK.
A satellite phone, which was also recovered in the Pele box, showed a series of calls to a phone in Spain and another satellite phone as it travelled across the Atlantic on the Lucky Day.
Gardaí found fingerprints belonging to Daly and Wanden on seating from the Rib which they found at a rented house at Farnamanagh near Kilcrohane. They also found Wharrie's fingerprints on a notebook with numbers found on the Witsey phone in it.
They recovered a false passport belonging to Wharrie in a bag in the boot of a VW Passat hired by his wife. In the same vehicle, they also found a false passport in the name of a Gerard O'Leary but bearing the photograph of Hagan who had travelled across the Atlantic on the Lucky Day.
Further investigation uncovered CCTV footage of Joe Daly with Wanden (who was travelling under the alias Anthony Linden) boarding the ferry at Pembroke Dock on June 15th, 2007. The pair were in a blue jeep which was towing the Rib that ended up capsized in Dunlough Bay.
In isolation, such evidence might have seemed innocuous, but when patiently pieced together by gardaí and the prosecution case, it stitched the three accused firmly into the fabric of a major drugs smuggling operation and left them with some serious explaining to do.
While Wharrie opted not to take the stand, both Daly and Wanden did testify. The former essentially said he was duped into helping his older brother Michael bring the Rib to Ireland and that he knew nothing about the drugs until he saw them floating in Dunlough Bay.
The jury learned that Michael Daly, who featured prominently throughout the Mizen smuggling operation, was a former Det Sgt with the London Metropolitan Drugs Squad who is currently in custody in the UK having been caught in May 2008 with 200 kilos of drugs at Folkestone.
If Joe Daly's protestations of innocence made demands of the jury's credulity, Wanden's explanation of how he inadvertently found himself floating amid 1.5 tonnes of cocaine presupposed an even greater gullibility, stretching credibility to truly elastic proportions.
Wanden had been in custody for over a year and his testimony reflected studious preparation as he explained he had simply come to Ireland to go walking in west Cork after his friend and used car salesman Charlie Goldie mentioned he could get a free lift to Ireland.
Straight faced, Wanden told how he went out to Dunlough Bay after getting a phone call from his friend Charlie Goldie saying he had run out of petrol while fishing and asking him to get a spare Rib kept at Kilcrohane Pier and to come and help him.
But, he told the jury, when he arrived at the Rib containing Mr Goldie and two other men, he spotted loads of boxes on board and realised that something was wrong.
He told them that he didn't want to get involved and wanted to be dropped ashore immediately.
"The sea was very choppy . . . all I can remember are the boxes and I said 'Charlie - what's going on 'ere?' And he said 'Don't worry, it's nothing to do with you; don't worry - we just need to get petrol," Wanden explained like a Cockney wideboy.
"There was an argument . . . and I was more or less pushed into the other Rib. 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 they were gone," he concluded.
Along with his preparation was an arrogance that he could dupe the jury, but yesterday, after over seven hours of deliberation, the jury gave its reply and Wanden and his co-accused will today learn the consequences of telling tall tales. And of putting diesel in a petrol engine.