'Mothership' suspected of carrying €100m worth of cocaine searched off Kerry coast

The men were arrested at 5.20am on Monday on their way back from Meenogahane pier, near Ballyheigue, in a Land Rover. Picture: Domnick Walsh/Eye Focus LTD

A "mothership" suspected of being used to traffic drugs — possibly up to €100m worth of cocaine — off the Kerry coast was being searched by gardaí and customs officers on Thursday.

Five people have been arrested so far in connection with the suspected drug trafficking operation.

No one was charged as of Thursday evening, but gardaí have gathered significant evidence in the case.

Multiple phones seized in the operation include “a highly encrypted device that we see at the highest level of international crime”, Chief Superintendent Séamus Boland of the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (GNDOCB) told a Kerry court this week. Phones and CCTV are currently being analysed in the investigation.

The so-called mothership is understood be some 200m in length and to have come from Brazil.

One man, aged 28, was arrested from the suspected mothership which was intercepted in the Shannon estuary on Wednesday. He was arrested on suspicion of facilitating or enhancing a criminal organisation to commit a serious offence, contrary to Section 72 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006, and has been detained at a garda station in Co Clare.

Four other men remained under questioning by gardaí in Killarney and Tralee on Thursday evening. They were arrested in the early hours of Monday on suspicion of assisting organised crime in the importation of controlled drugs from a mothership off the coast of Kerry.

Detention extended

At a special sitting of Killarney District Court on Tuesday night, their period of detention was extended until Friday evening. The men are aged 30, 31, 39 and 45.

One of the men has an address in Derry, one is a Serbian national with an address in Manchester, and two men have addresses in Glasgow.

The men were arrested at 5.20am on Monday on their way back from Meenogahane pier, near Ballyheigue, in a Land Rover. They had left the pier after midnight in a rigid inflatable boat that had been fitted with powerful engines.

They were arrested under Section 72 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006 on suspicion of enhancing or facilitating the ability of a criminal organisation to commit a serious offence, namely the importation and possession for supply of controlled drugs.

Night vision equipment, several phones, and highly encrypted devices were seized by gardaí. No drugs have been seized.

Investigators now believe that a substantial shipment of drugs, valued at up to €100m, was transferred from a mothership to a smaller vessel off the Kerry coast in the early hours of Monday morning. The transfer is believed to have taken place a significant distance offshore.

Collaborative efforts

Vast resources are being deployed, and investigating gardaí are liaising with a number of international police agencies — including Interpol, Europol, maritime crime investigators in Portugal, and British agencies.

The operation was intelligence-led, with MAOC-N — a European forum to tackle illicit drug trafficking based in Lisbon — sharing information on the suspected drug trafficking operation with Irish authorities, it is understood.

The 200m-long cargo vessel came from Brazil, it is understood. A ship of this size would generally take 15 to 20 crew.

The boat may have left Brazil without any suspected drug cargo, with drugs possibly loaded by traffickers while the ship was at sea.

Motherships are now known to travel internationally, dropping off drugs to smaller vessels or ejecting them into the water at agreed positions to be collected by smaller boats. Drugs can be passed between smaller boats while at sea in a bid to evade authorities.

It has been suspected that criminals have targeted the Irish coast, particularly the West, as it is not heavily patrolled and small boats can easily leave the shore at night to make collections from larger motherships with limited chances that they will be detected by authorities.