‘€440m worth of cocaine floating in stormy waters’

A BOAT sank off the west Cork coast and €440 million worth of cocaine floated in the stormy waters as one man made it to a coastal farmhouse to alert the rescue services that another man was still in the sea.

That was the dramatic picture painted for a jury of nine men and three women as the biggest drug trial in the history of the State got underway at Cork circuit criminal court.

At courtroom two of Cork circuit criminal court, three Englishmen, Perry Wharrie, 48, of Pryles Lane, Essex, England; Joseph Daly, 41 from Carisbrook Avenue, Bexley, Kent, and Martin Wanden, 45, of no fixed abode, all deny the charges of possessing cocaine, possessing it with intent to sell or supply, and having it for sale or supply when its street value exceeded €13,000 on July 2 2007 at Dunlough Bay, Mizen, Goleen, Co Cork.