Man unaware €8.5m worth of cocaine was stored in his home
Detectives in Dublin’s south inner city located a cocaine importation centre inside an innocuous suburban house in south Dublin on Sunday night. Gardaí said a 68-year-old man who lived in the house in Terenure had no idea the drugs were being stored there.
They recovered 14kg of high purity cocaine, which they estimate to be worth in the region of €8.5 million on the street. They also seized two semi-automatic handguns. Officers say their high valuation is based on initial tests indicating the purity of the cocaine is nine times that of street cocaine, which can vary from 3% to 12% pure cocaine.
When diluted and bulked up with mixing agents, Gardaí believe the 14kg could have created more than 120kg of street cocaine, typically 70,000 a kilo.
Gardaí have linked this warehouse centre with a cocaine mixing factory they uncovered in a house in Tallaght last Thursday.
Some 2.5kg of high purity cocaine, as well as around 60kg of either mixed cocaine or the cutting agent lignocaine, worth €2m, were seized in Tallaght. They also recovered compressors, mixing and bagging equipment.
The Garda operation was carried out by the detective and drug units at Kevin Street Station, led by Detective Superintendent Gabriel O’Gara and Detective Inspector JJ Keane.
Gardaí suspect the high purity cocaine was shipped into the Terenure house and then cut up, mixed and bagged in the factory in Tallaght. They suspect the cocaine operation was controlled by one of the two feuding gangs in the Crumlin, Drimnagh and south inner city area of Dublin.
The boss of this gang is wanted by Spanish police in connection with the multi-national police operation against the Christy Kinahan drug and money-laundering empire last month.
Gardaí suspect the gang boss organised the shipment of the cocaine through associates on the Costa del Sol.
“The cocaine was for south inner city gangs, a south inner city network,” said a garda source. “A lot of the gangs are aligned to him [the gang boss], but some operate independently.”
Gardaí said this was a “major blow” to the gang, not just in disrupting their supply chain, but also hitting them in the pocket. Sources suggested high purity cocaine would cost in the region of €50,000 per kilo, indicating a total outlay of around €700,000.
A couple, a 24-year-old female and a 29-year-old male, were arrested in the Tallaght operation. Gardaí said they are not looking for anyone else in relation to the Terenure raid.
Gardaí said the couple, due to fly out to Tenerife yesterday for a wedding, were not known to Gardaí. However, senior gardaí said this was not uncommon as gangs typically used such people to store drugs.
The haul brings to around 80kg the amount of cocaine seized this year, compared with 129kg last year.
Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy welcomed the haul and said it was part of their strategy to focus on high-profile drug traffickers.
