Cartel's green light for cocaine gangs

Irish crims invite international mobs to use country as drug-smuggling route Increased activity in Irish waters as 600 ships A DAY ply evil trade across the Atlantic

- BY MICHAEL O'TOOLE Crime and Defence Editor

THE Kinahan cartel and other top Irish gangs have invited international mobs to use Ireland as a drugs smuggling route, a senior Garda warns tonight.

Detective Chief Superintendent Seamus Boland, the head of the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, makes his comments in a BBC programme investigating why global cartels are using Ireland as a route to smuggle cocaine into Britain and Europe.

The senior garda says: "Irish gangs who sit at the top table, who are involved and are linking in with other global drug trafficking groups, have invited them into Ireland."

The hard-hitting BBC Spotlight/ Panorama joint production also hears that a massive 600 ships cross the Atlantic Ocean every single day bringing cocaine from South America to the huge European market, including Ireland and Britain.

Sjoerd Top, a director of the EU's anti-drugs smuggling operation MAOC-N, tells presenter Darragh McIntyre: "The amount of cocaine being produced in Latin America at the moment is higher than it has ever been before.

"We have more intelligence of vessels crossing the Atlantic loaded with drugs. Every day between 500 and 600 vessels and at this moment it is over 600 vessels."

Mr McIntyre, an award-winning journalist, says Ireland's long and sparsely populated west coastline is just what cartels are looking for.