Contraband haul for customs officers

A SERIES of operations by customs officers in the south-west in recent days have netted tens of thousands of euro worth of contraband cigarettes, alcohol and drugs as well as a number of vehicles.

Thu, 01 Sep, 2011 - 01:00

Sean O’Riordan

The first operation took place on Saturday when officers from the Revenue’s Customs Service stopped four Eastern Europeans with addresses in Britain who were attempting to smuggle a considerable amount of contraband into Ireland through Ringaskiddy port in Co Cork.

Officers seized 20,000 cigarettes, 538 litres of beer, 92 litres of vodka and the van in which they were being transported.

A spokeswoman for the Customs Service said the cigarettes were of Russian and Lithuanian origin while the alcohol was Polish.

The seized goods had a retail value of approximately €15,000.

Last Monday, customs officials at Cork Airport stopped and searched three men with British addresses and one Spaniard after they arrived on a flight from Malaga in Spain.

All four had swallowed a quantity of cannabis resin and one had some of the drugs strapped to his leg.

This operation netted a total of 3.5kg of cannabis resin, which officers said had a street value of about €21,000.

The men were all arrested and taken to Togher Garda Station where they were charged under Section 15 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977.

In a separate operation at the airport later the same night, customs officers detected more drugs.

This time it was down to the work of the Revenue’s drug detector dog, which reacted to two female passengers. According to the Customs Service spokeswoman, the women were “detected with small quantities of cannabis carried internally”.

On Tuesday, in a much larger operation, customs officers from Cork, Kerry and Limerick carried out an intelligence-led operation against people operating an illegal cigarette distribution network in Cork and Kerry. Following a search of a car at Barraduff, outside Killarney, Co Kerry, officers seized €42,000 worth of cigarettes and the car. The contraband cigarettes were foreign brands.