Small airports are plane sailing for drug smugglers

WHEN DRUG dealer John Kinsella was sentenced recently for conspiring to import cocaine and heroin, his barrister told Judge Tony Hunt that Kinsella's guilty plea had saved the State the considerable expense of a lengthy and complex trial, writes CONOR LALLY,Crime Correspondent

What the public doesn’t know is that the cost of Kinsella’s trial would have been worth every cent.

It promised to offer a fascinating insight into a cartel of international drug smugglers which included a middle-class Irish businessman. But, perhaps most shockingly, had the trial gone ahead it would have exposed a system of security checks at small Irish airports that effectively operate on a gentleman’s agreement.

Kinsella, a 38-year-old former champion boxer with an address at Carne Wood, Johnstown, Navan, Co Meath, had led a flash lifestyle as the owner of an aviation brokerage. He hired private jets for wealthy clients, using Weston Airport near Lucan, Co Dublin, as his base.

But not content with his legitimate earnings, he sought to use his access to planes and Weston as a means of smuggling millions of euro worth of drugs into the Republic from mainland Europe.

He was jailed for 12 years for his role in an attempt to fly heroin and cocaine valued at €7 million on a private jet from Wevelgem, Belgium, into Ireland through Weston in September 2006.

The plan came undone when the police in Belgium found the drugs as they were about to be loaded on to an aircraft at Wevelgem. Gardaí were in on the investigation and arrested Kinsella in Ireland. A Dutch-based Scotsman, James Rankin, was arrested and jailed in Belgium.

The aircraft the drugs were to be transported on was owned by businessman Jim Mansfield, who also owns Weston. There is no suggestion whatsoever that Mansfield was ever under suspicion.

Kinsella had arranged for Mansfield’s plane to be taken out of the country without his knowledge. Kinsella and Rankin were rumbled when Dutch police intercepted their telephone conversations arranging the shipment.

Kinsella spoke of arranging the plane, or “bird” as he called it. He also referred to a figure at the top of the operation as “the auld fella”.

The Irish Times has established through Garda contacts that this man lives on the north side of Dublin city. He is a wealthy businessman whose identity has never even been hinted at publicly by gardaí or the media.

A drug dealer based in Ronanstown was also involved, as was a businessman who is in his 60s and from Palmerstown in Dublin, and has a criminal record.

The nucleus of the group had also been involved in a previous effort to smuggle €6 million in drugs from Belgium to Ireland a number of years ago. That bid failed when a lorry driver panicked and abandoned the drugs in his truck on a motorway in Belgium.

Sentencing Kinsella for the drug-smuggling effort via Weston, Judge Hunt said the proposed use of the airport in the enterprise was “a matter of grave concern”.

He said Customs and gardaí had extensive systems in place at public sea and airports but these were “set at nought” if private firms, such as Kinsella’s Billionaire Ltd, could bypass such controls.

What did not emerge, because no trial took place, was the lax nature of those security checks.

Despite what we now know of Kinsella’s efforts to use a small airport to smuggle a massive consignment of drugs, security at these airports continues to operate on a self-declaration basis.

Unlike large airports such as Dublin and Shannon, small airfields do not have port-of-entry status. It means they do not have permanent immigration and Customs checks that a flight originating outside Ireland – or carrying a foreign passenger – must clear in order to enter Ireland legally.

If a flight originating from outside Ireland – or carrying a foreign passenger – wants to use a small airfield to enter Ireland, the crew is supposed to notify the authorities, so that Garda and Customs checks can screen the plane’s cargo and passengers.

But the system operates on a self-declaration basis. If the crew fails to declare itself, the Irish authorities will be completely unaware of their presence. Passengers can alight, and cargo from anywhere in the world can be unloaded, without the knowledge of the authorities and without being checked by the Garda or Customs officials.

If an undeclared plane is detected, it is the crew that has broken the law; the airport operators or anybody in Ireland who facilitated the flight faces no sanction.

A system of random, unannounced, Customs checks is in operation. However, according to figures released to Fine Gael’s justice spokesman Charlie Flanagan TD, these are performed infrequently. In Weston this year there have been just 18 planned and unannounced Customs checks. Sligo and Donegal airports were checked more often, at 60 times each this year.

On some days, multiple checks would have been carried out, meaning the number of days there was a Customs presence was a lot lower than the number of individual checks suggests.

Small airports still have a considerable number of days each year when small aircraft flying in from overseas could drop off passengers and cargo unchecked.

Flanagan says it is “incredible” that Customs checks at airports are based on a system of self-declaration. “Drug dealers are not going to declare to the authorities where they are going to be on a particular date.”

Flanagan says he has tabled a series of Dáil questions in recent years about the small number of checks at small airports. He says it is clear from the replies that Revenue’s Customs officers are aware of around 30 airports and airstrips.

However, many other landing strips, capable of taking very small planes from the UK, did not feature in any of the replies he received, meaning “they are not on the radar so to speak for Customs checks”.

He has no doubt drugs cartels are aware of these loopholes and are exploiting them.

“It’s very unfair of us to expect gardaí to seize drugs on the streets and police the drugs problem when we’re so bereft of adequate security at entry points to the country.”