Gardai and Customs officers yesterday hailed the jailing of two men convicted of possessing £41 million worth cocaine for supply for 20 years and 14 years as a major boost in the war against drugs.
Dublin-born John O'Toole (52) was jailed for 20 years and Englishman Michael Tune (39) was jailed for 14 years by Judge Patrick Moran for having the cocaine for supply in Kinsale last September. The judge said he had to include a deterrent factor in sentencing the men for bringing the drugs to Ireland. "I must send a message to people in the drugs world on behalf of people in society," he declared.
O'Toole, with an address in Panama City, and Tune, with an address in Tenerife, had brought 325 kilos of the drug from Panama to Kinsale on board O'Toole's boat, the Gemeos. an Healy said the sentences would help deter anyone contemplating similar such missions. "Sentences like those imposed today send a very definite message to anyone considering Ireland as a target for importing drugs," he said.
The three-week trial at Cork Circuit Criminal Court heard that officers from the Customs and Excise national drugs unit uncovered the cocaine hidden under bunks, diesel tanks and behind a bulwark on the 50-foot catamaran.
Analysis showed it was 75 per cent pure cocaine, giving it an estimated street value of £41.5 million. Gardai believe the drugs were destined for transhipment to the UK and Europe, with only a fraction destined for Ireland.
It was the second biggest cocaine seizure in the history of the State, after the £88 million seizure of 600 kilos of cocaine on the Sea Mist in Cork Harbour in October 1996, which resulted in one man, Gordon Richards, being jailed for 17 years.
Suspicions about the Gemeos were aroused when it moored on the wrong buoy in Kinsale and failed to pay harbour dues. The Harbour Master, Capt Phil Devitt, contacted Customs officers, who went to interview O'Toole. He told them he and Tune had sailed it from Tenerife, but they found charts showing it had come from the Caribbean. O'Toole said he was bringing the boat to Europe to sell it but the Customs officers didn't believe him. They searched Tune's room in a local hotel and found a gun, and the two men were arrested by gardai for questioning.
A third crew member, Englishman Phil Ussher, left the boat before it was visited by the Customs officers and flew to the US. Gardai believe the trio were to rendezvous with an Englishman who was seen in Kinsale around the same time.
The court had heard that neither O'Toole nor Tune was "from the criminal fraternity" and had been recruited as "pawns" by drug barons. But Judge Moran said that as carriers they played an important part in the operation. He ordered that the drugs be destroyed and the Gemeos sold, with the proceeds going to the State.