Customs officers were alerted when drugs boat docked in Cork with no flag, writes Barry Roche.
He may have had a box at Royal Ascot and was said to have been hobnobbing with some of Britain's finest, but it could be Brian Wright's failure to remember his Irish roots that led to the gradual unravelling of his drugs empire and his ultimate downfall.
The beginning of the end for Dublin-born Wright goes back to September 29th, 1996, when one of his drug smuggling vessels, the converted trawler Sea Mist, was forced to put into Cork Harbour with engine trouble while crossing the Atlantic.
Skipper Gordon Richards was suffering from extreme back pain and needed to see a physiotherapist, but it was his failure to fly the Irish flag when mooring off East Ferry that aroused the suspicions of a local who contacted Customs officers.
Backed up by gardaí and members of the Irish Naval Service, Customs officers boarded the 60-ft trawler and brought the vessel to Cobh, where a search uncovered some 599kg of cocaine with a street value of €125 million hidden in the boat's dumb waiter.
Richards and his crew of Polish-born Roman Smollen from St Lucia, Howard Miller from Ambleside, Cumbria, James Noel from St Lucia and Teresa Da Silva Roy from Puerto De La Cruz, Venezuela, were all arrested.
All five went on trial at Cork Circuit Criminal Court but following legal argument, the jury were directed by Judge AG Murphy to acquit Miller, Noel and Roy, and the jury later acquitted Smollen, leaving only Richards to face sentencing.
Richards, whose real named turned out to be John Ewart, was sentenced to 17 years in jail. The sentence was affirmed by the Court of Criminal Appeal and he is currently serving his sentence in Arbour Hill with a scheduled release date of June 2009.
Although Richards later admitted that the shipment was organised by Wright and intended for his organisation, Customs officers made the connection when they were able to trace a number of mobile phones found on board the Sea Mist to a man called John Gurney.
Gurney was an associate of Wright and had provided money to buy the phones and a yacht called Selina, which was due to rendezvous with the Sea Mist off Dorset, collect its illicit cargo and bring it ashore near Poole, as she would attract less attention from British customs.
Irish Customs officers passed on their information to their British and US counterparts and both began lengthy investigations which resulted in the arrest and conviction of 16 members of Wright's gang, including Smollen, who was later caught in another operation in Britain.
Among those arrested and jailed was Wright's son, Brian, but Wright himself fled to northern Cyprus to avoid extradition and only surfaced in Spain in 2003 from where he was extradited back to Britain to stand trial.
As he was sentenced yesterday to 30 years in jail, Wright may have ruefully reflected on the fact that if only his gang had put up a Tricolour when entering Cork Harbour, suspicion might have been avoided and he might still be carrying out his multi-million euro drugs trade.