Baby son goes into jail with cigarette smuggler

A Mongolian woman who was caught three times trying to smuggle cigarettes into the State has brought her baby son to prison with her while she serves a six month sentence.

Tugsuu Myagmar (aged 30) was driven to Mountjoy Jail by her husband by permission of Judge Katherine Delahunt because the prison van did not have a baby seat.

Myagmar, of Mountjoy Square, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to attempting to evade excise duty on dates between August 6, 2005 and April 9, 2006. She had no previous convictions and the cigarettes were valued at €25,410.

She failed three times to pay excise duty on 80,980 cigarettes she tried to bring into Dublin Airport

Judge Delahunt had previously adjourned sentencing to allow Myagmar make childcare arrangements for her baby and when she finalised sentence today, she acceded to a defence request to allow Myagmar’s husband to drive her to prison on condition they arrived there before 4pm.

Judge Delahunt said she accepted that Myagmar had not come to garda attention before or since this offence and said she did not underestimate the difficulties she faced trying to make a life for herself in Ireland while trying to support a family in Mongolia.

However, she added, Myagmar had intended to deprive the State of the excise duty it was entitled to and that she got involved in this smuggling operation purely for financial gain.

Judge Delahunt said she was satisfied that a custodial sentence was warranted because Myagmar clearly knew she was involved in criminal activity by the time she was caught on the third occasion in April 2006.

Niall Jennings, a Customs and Excise officer, told Mr Dominic McGinn BL, prosecuting, that Myagmar claimed the cigarettes were for her own use and that of her family in each of the first two occasions she was found to have them in her luggage but when she was stopped again in the Airport on April 9, 2006 she admitted she had intended to sell them.

Myagmar has been living with her husband in Ireland since 2004 and has been studying English here.

Mr Jennings agreed with defence counsel, Mr Ronan Kennedy BL, that Myagmar had co-operated with custom staff at the Airport and had not come to garda attention since.

Mr Kennedy told Judge Delahunt that his client and her husband left another young child with his parents in Mongolia to come to Ireland to try and make a better life for themselves but she had not returned to her studies since the recent birth of her son.