Three to be sentenced for cocaine smuggling bid

Three men caught off the Cork coast with almost two tonnes of cocaine will be sentenced today for their roles in an elaborate international drugs smuggling ring.

Philip Doo and David Mufford, from Devon in England, and Christopher Wiggins, with an address in the Costa del Sol, face up to life in prison after admitting their roles in Ireland’s largest drugs seizure.

They are due to appear before Cork Circuit Criminal Court today.

The record-breaking haul was recovered by elite navy teams on board a yacht as it struggled to stay afloat in the Atlantic Ocean last November.

The three men were dramatically arrested 170 miles off the south west coast when a transatlantic drug trafficking scam was smashed about a month after the boat came to the attention of authorities in the Caribbean.

Loaded with 75 bales of cocaine, Dances With Waves was then pinpointed by the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and tracked by Europe’s anti-drug trafficking agency Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre – Narcotics (Maoc-N) before Irish officials moved in.

Doo (aged 52) from Rocklands House, Higher Manor Road, Brixham, Devon; his former brother-in-law Wiggins (aged 42), with an address at Mirador de Costalita, Estepona, Malaga, and Mufford (aged 44), of Clennon Lane, Torquay, have pleaded guilty to being on board a ship which was not registered in any country or territory and being in possession of cocaine worth more than €13,000 for sale or supply.

The three are facing anything from 10 years in prison to a maximum life sentence.

Tough anti-drug laws were introduced last year as part of amendments to the Criminal Justice Act as the Government sought harsher penalties for dealers and others involved in gangsterism.

Included in the crackdown was a mandatory 10 years in jail for any drug seizure worth more than €13,000.

Specialist naval teams swooped on the damaged 60ft ocean-going yacht, a McGregor sloop, in treacherous seas on November 5 under the remit Operation Seabight – headed by a Joint Task Force on Drugs Interdiction involving naval, customs and garda chiefs.

The crippled vessel was then sailed to Castletownbere, west Cork, under armed guard where the 75 plastic-wrapped bales which filled the yacht’s hull were unloaded and handed over to customs officials.

At the time the seizure was hailed as the largest in the history of the Irish state.

Just 16 months earlier, authorities seized a previous record 1.5 tonnes of cocaine – valued at a record €440m at the time – which was washed up after an elaborate smuggling scam was foiled in the same part of the country.

Three Englishmen jailed for a total of 85 years after being found guilty of smuggling the cocaine into the country are appealing against their sentence and conviction. A fourth British man, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.