Was riddle of Cork cargo behind gang cocaine flare-up?

THE motive behind the slaying of two of Scotland’s highest-profile gangsters may be linked to the biggest shipment of cocaine seized in Ireland, it has been claimed.

- By Richard Elias

Ross Monaghan and Eddie Lyons Jnr were gunned down in a Spanish bar last month with many quick to assume it was connected to one of two things.

Either, it related to the decades-long feud between two rival Glasgow crime families or it was connected to an on-going gang war which has blighted Scotland since March.

But insiders have never believed the murders in Fuengirola had anything to do with those conflicts.

Police Scotland even went so far as to publicly say that there was not anything to link the killings to individuals here or any dispute, historic or current.

Despite this, Pedro Agudo Novo, the head of the murder probe in Spain, claimed at a Press conference last week the murders had been carried out by a member of the north Glasgow-based Daniel crime gang.

For more than 20 years, they have been at war with their bitter local rivals, the Lyons family but despite Novo’s comment, his superiors have since cast doubt on his statement and Police Scotland have doubled down on their insistence there is nothing to link the killings back here.

However, now it has been suggested that events across the Irish Sea two years ago may still be casting a shadow over underworld activities in the UK.

In the early hours of September 26, 2023, Army Rangers, a special-ist division of the Irish Defence Forces rappelled — using a double rope wrapped twice around their bodies — from a helicopter to land on the deck of a cargo ship off the coast of County Cork.

The mv Matthew was found to be carry 157million euros worth of cocaine — a 2.25-ton haul which when “bulked up” for street distribution could have netted those behind the plot 500 euros.

Admitted