Man gets 10 years for smuggling €21.6m cocaine haul from Brazil to Limerick

Judge Daly said Kamen Petkov was, in his opinion, 'not entitled' to a sentence lower than the prescriptive mandatory minimum of 10 years

Kamen Petkov told gardaí he had gambling debts of €37,000 and that he was to be paid €150,000 for managing the drug shipment on board the Maltese registered vessel, the MV Verila. Picture via Facebook

A Bulgarian man who admitted smuggling €21.6m worth of cocaine on board a cargo ship that sailed from Brazil to Ireland, was jailed for 10 years on Tuesday.

Kamen Petkov, aged 36, had been in control of “such a large quantity of drugs that it was impossible not to conclude that thousands of lives would have been affected by such a volume of drugs,” Judge Colin Daly told Petkov’s sentencing hearing at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court.