Hi-tech cocaine smuggling a result of boom in profits
The 39-year-old was brought in specifically as a chemist by international traffickers, possibly Nigerian, with links in Dublin.
His job was to extract cocaine which had been impregnated in liquid form into clothing using a solution of chemicals.
The cocaine had an estimated street value of over €255,000.
Alba was a key cog in a sophisticated operation, part of a new trend which has emerged in Ireland in the past few years.
Gardaí suspect Alba was not flown from Bolivia just for one job and may have had four to five jobs to carry out while here.
In June 2002, customs officers discovered for the first time this novel way of smuggling cocaine into Ireland.
Officers at Dublin Airport seized 5kgs of liquid cocaine, with a street value of around €500,000, which had been soaked into pairs of jeans and hidden in a woman’s luggage. A Brazilian woman was arrested.
Gardaí and customs suspect that, since then, similar smuggling operations have been carried out and that laboratories such as the one in Kilkenny, involved in the wholesale manufacture of cocaine, have become established.
Last week, gardaí raided what turned out to be a large-scale processing facility in an apartment in Donabate, Co Dublin.
Some 19kgs of cocaine were seized, with an estimated street value of €1.3m, along with mixing agents, weighing scales and a compressor, weighing three-quarters of a tonne.
There have been at least three other finds this year involving some level of cocaine processing:
Gardaí in Limerick seized €50,000 and a cocaine-pressing machine at the house in Hyde Road, Limerick, on June 29. Detectives believe this was at the lower end of cocaine trafficking, and involved the cutting and compressing of cocaine into blocks.
Officers from the Garda National Drugs Unit (GNDU) recovered about €50,000 worth of cocaine, a compressor, a vacuum packer and glucose mixing agents at a house in Terenure, south Dublin on March 25. An English national arrested at the scene was suspected of producing several million euro worth of cocaine over the previous 12 months.
The GNDU seized 8kgs of cocaine, worth an estimated €800,000, along with 20kgs of mixing agent at a house in Carbury, Co Kildare, on February 1. Once the cocaine was cut with the mixing agent, gardaí believe the final street value would be closer to €2m.
These discoveries reflect a general surge in cocaine supply over the past three to four years, driven largely by the potential for massive profits.
“The cocaine paste that comes from South America has a purity of 80%-plus. On the street it is less than 20%, and as low as 10%. The profits are huge,” said one detective.
Dealers are buying a kilo of cocaine paste for around €30,000. With mixing agents, the kilo is cut down four to five times, giving the dealer 4-5kgs of street cocaine.
With each kilo selling for €80,000 to €100,000 on the street, that gives an overall profit of between €290,000-€470,000.
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