HomeNewsIreland Seizures Highlight Growing Role in Cocaine Trade
NEWS

Ireland Seizures Highlight Growing Role in Cocaine Trade

COCAINE / 1 DEC 2021 BY ALESSANDRO FORD EN

Irish authorities have made a string of significant cocaine seizures this year, amid signs the island is becoming increasingly important to European and Latin American traffickers as both a consumption market and transit point.

On November 24, Ireland’s Customs Service discovered 60 kilograms of cocaine in a container at the port of Dublin, which was smuggled from the Dutch port of Rotterdam and another 270 kilograms of marijuana and heroin.

Police sources told the Irish Times only a small number of Irish crime syndicates could organize such a smuggling operation, including the country’s most prominent drug trafficking family: the Kinahan clan.

SEE ALSO: InSight Crime Investigation - The Cocaine Pipeline to Europe

Led by notorious boss Daniel Kinahan, the group is also suspected of being behind two other recent importations: that in early November of a $3.2 million cocaine cargo – somewhere between 50 and 100 kilograms – from France and that in July of up to 500 kilograms of the drug camouflaged in two containers of charcoal from the Netherlands.

The seizures occur within the context of growing cocaine use in Ireland. According to Eamon Dillon, an Irish crime journalist, the small country of 5 million people is now Europe’s third-largest cocaine consumer per capita, behind Spain and the United Kingdom.

“Cocaine is now available in every small town across Ireland compared to being previously only available in the bigger urban areas ... [and] it wholesales at €28,000 [$31,700] a kilogram and can be sold at a street value of €76,000 [$86,000],” he told InSight Crime.

Kinahan is believed to be crucial to the cocaine trade in Ireland and much of Europe, due to being part of a "Super Cartel," with members of the Dutch mafia, the Italian Camorra and Bosnian organized crime. This organization sourced colossal quantities of cocaine, especially from Peru, where prosecutors have targeted their associates.

InSight Crime Analysis

Besides its burgeoning domestic market, Ireland has become a key pivot in the European cocaine trade for three main reasons.

Firstly, there is a growing presence of Irish criminal emissaries in South America. Despatched by their organizations to negotiate, arrange transport for and often guarantee payment for cocaine shipments, Irish criminals have joined a panoply of other European nationalities traveling to source countries to access lower cocaine wholesale prices, according to a 2021 InSight Crime investigation.

This has been most visible when things have gone wrong. In 2019, an alleged Irish emissary was kidnapped in Colombia after a disagreement with a Valle del Cauca-based crime group, while in 2017, a suspected Kinahan clan associate was murdered and dumped in a ravine near Medellín, reportedly by the Oficina, formerly known as the Oficina de Envigado, in retaliation for a seized drug load.

“The Irish Police are taking connections between Irish criminals and South America seriously. In February this year [the Irish police] appointed a full-time liaison officer based in Colombia,” said Dillon, the journalist.

SEE ALSO: Balkan Gangs Supervise Cocaine Trade from Colombia and Across Europe

Secondly, Irish gangs have forged strong ties with other European mafias, especially Dutch drug traffickers. This was most visible in the now-dismantled “Super Cartel” formed between Daniel Kinahan and Ridouan Taghi, the Netherlands' biggest alleged drug trafficker.

First identified by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2018, the consortium was believed responsible for one-third of all cocaine smuggled into the Dutch port of Rotterdam: roughly 33 metric tons of cocaine that year. At present, Kinahan is the last member of the consortium still at large.

Thirdly, the re-routing of maritime trade after the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. With increased red tape and regulations on European cargo arriving in Great Britain, some experts believe there may be an increase in the use of the Irish land border to traffic cocaine into Northern Ireland and from there to Great Britain.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

BRAZIL / 27 MAY 2022

Cocaine seizures have jumped at the Guarulhos International Airport near São Paulo, Brazil, showing that neither COVID-19 nor international law…

COCAINE / 21 FEB 2022

When authorities in Spain captured the first known drug submarine to cross the Atlantic, questions soon surfaced about how such…

COCAINE / 13 APR 2021

The dismantling of a Costa Rican drug gang that worked with agents in an elite investigative unit to steal cocaine…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

Venezuela Coverage Continues to be Highlighted

3 MAR 2023

This week, InSight Crime co-director Jeremy McDermott was the featured guest on the Americas Quarterly podcast, where he provided an expert overview of the changing dynamics…

THE ORGANIZATION

Venezuela's Organized Crime Top 10 Attracts Attention

24 FEB 2023

Last week, InSight Crime published its ranking of Venezuela’s ten organized crime groups to accompany the launch of the Venezuela Organized Crime Observatory. Read…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime on El País Podcast

10 FEB 2023

This week, InSight Crime co-founder, Jeremy McDermott, was among experts featured in an El País podcast on the progress of Colombia’s nascent peace process.

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Interviewed by Associated Press

3 FEB 2023

This week, InSight Crime’s Co-director Jeremy McDermott was interviewed by the Associated Press on developments in Haiti as the country continues its prolonged collapse. McDermott’s words were republished around the world,…

THE ORGANIZATION

Escaping Barrio 18

27 JAN 2023

Last week, InSight Crime published an investigation charting the story of Desafío, a 28-year-old Barrio 18 gang member who is desperate to escape gang life. But there’s one problem: he’s…