Seven men who conspired to smuggle €59m of cocaine into West Cork jailed for combined 70 years

Stephen Bourke and Fiona Magennis

Seven men who took part in an international conspiracy to pilot a “narco boat” into west Cork “totally underestimated” both the local community and law enforcement, a judge has said, as they were sentenced to a combined 70 years in jail.

Aleksander Milic (28), Mario Angel Del Rio Sanz (46), Anuar Rahui Chairi (43), Juan Antonio Gallardo Barroso (56), Pedro Pablo Ojeda Ortega (37), and Angel Serran Padilla (41), were handed sentences ranging from 8 to 11 years each at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin on Thursday for their parts in the failed drug smuggling operation.

The men had all pleaded guilty to taking part in a conspiracy to import controlled drugs between February 27th and March 14th 2024, contrary to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, as amended.

They were among ten men arrested when gardaí acting on a tip-off about suspicious activity at Tragumna Pier near Skibbereen swooped and seized a rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB), road vehicles, and thousands of euro worth of nautical gear, communications equipment and clothing.

Detective Inspector Joe Young told the court earlier this year that a major surveillance operation had already been mounted by gardaí after officers at a roadside checkpoint near Bandon on 22nd of February that year searched a car.

In the vehicle, they found a notepad with the names of six local AirBnB properties, and the coordinates of Roscarbery and Dromadoon Piers.

The smugglers’ twin-engine RHIB was seized by gardaí and inspected by a former naval officer, Gary Delany, who found it was fitted with 300-horsepower engines, had parts painted black, and had just one light.

Mr Delaney’s view of the boat was that it was “for detecting, but not to be detected”, the court noted.

It was described in the sentence hearing as a “narco boat”, a term the court noted was used in other jurisdictions to describe a vessel “modified for the purpose of conducting drug trafficking at sea” and “darkened or blackened to ensure low profile and avoid detection”.

A GPS device seized from the conspirators showed the boat had been used to journey some 985km by sea “in an effort to interdict” a commercial vessel, the Panama-flagged Cool Explorer, as it was sailing from Ecuador to Russia via the English Channel and the Baltic Sea.

Five men spent 48 hours on the high seas in the RHIB following the track of the Cool Explorer as it passed south of Land’s End in Britain around 12 March 2024, before turning back to Cork in “considerably rough” conditions, with a weather warning in place, the court noted.

Inspector Young told the sentencing hearing that the boat had made “an attempt to travel towards the path of the Cool Explorer” and that the intention was to make a “rendezvous” with the ship.

840kg of cocaine – valued at over €58 million -- was found washed up on a beach near Jutland in Denmark on March 17th, after the Cool Explorer passed the coastline, the court noted.

Passing sentence on Thursday, Ms Justice Karen O’Connor, sitting with Judge Sinéad Ni Chúlacháin and Judge Marie Keane, said the court was of the view the defendants had “involved themselves in a serious conspiracy to import controlled drugs into this jurisdiction”.

They had carried out “extensive planning and logistics”, and advance “reconnaissance” in west Cork “to take advantage of our coastal situation” – but had not reckoned with the vigilance of the local people or gardaí, Judge O’Connor said.

Judge O’Connor said: “The temerity of the co-conspirators, the total lack of respect for citizens in this jurisdiction, is astounding.”

“This court has been struck by the audacity and brazen nature of this conspiracy,” she said. “Arriving at this quiet coastline, presuming they would not be noticed, totally underestimating the diligence, neighbourliness and alertness of our local communities.”

The group had also “completely underestimated the quality of our law enforcement,” she added.

She said the headline sentence warranted for each of the co-conspirators was 18 years imprisonment each. She reduced this by a third in recognition of guilty pleas by each of the men and took further mitigation into account on an individual basis.

Kiumaars Ghabiri, an Iranian national resident in the Netherlands, along with Mario Angel Del Rio Sanz and Anuar Rahui Chairi from Spain, who had all been on land during the attempted smuggling operation, each received 11 years imprisonment.

Spanish national Angel Serran Padilla and his countryman Pedro Pablo Ojeda Ortega both took to sea in the RHIB. Padilla received a sentence of 11 years imprisonment, and Ortega 10 years.

Another Spanish national who helped crew the boat, Juan Antonio Gallardo Barroso, was sentenced to 8 years, as was Serbian national Aleksander Milic, the youngest of the group.