http://thestar.ie/exclusive-cocaine-comeback-as-garda-detective-speaks-out-part-2/EXCLUSIVE: Cocaine comeback as garda detective speaks out part 2
IRISH punters are flocking back to cocaine because they have money in their pockets again, the Gardai’s top anti-drugs detective warns today.
In the second part of his exclusive interview with The Irish Daily Star Online, Detective Chief Superintendent Michael O’Sullivan says people are snorting the dangerous party drug in huge numbers as the economy gets back to near boom times.
Chief Supt O’Sullivan leads the 120-strong recently formed Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau that is tasked with taking down crime lords and drugs barons.
Cocaine was at its height in Ireland during the heyday of the Celtic Tiger around 2007 —when the country was swamped with the drug.
But the economic crash of 2008 led to a slump in use of the drug, as people simply could not afford €80 or €100 for a night’s supply.
Gardai noticed users seemed to be deserting coke in favour of cheaper drugs like cannabis.
But as the economy appears to be back on its feet, the Garda annual report showed domestic seizures of the drug jumping from €3.6 million in 2013 to €7.6m last year.
Sources say this shows cocaine bosses like ‘Dapper Don’ Christy Kinahan (57) are targeting Ireland again from Spanish boltholes.
Chief Supt O’Sullivan — who warned in yesterday’s Irish Daily Star Online that gunmen are becoming increasingly unstable because they take cocaine before going on their hits — says there is no doubt coke is becoming more popular again.
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He said: “The increased cash flow will result in the increased use of cocaine. It can mirror the economy. Disposable income will mirror it, flash cars will mirror it, exotic holidays will mirror it — as will cocaine.”
The cocaine used in Ireland is largely produced by narco-terrorists in Colombia and imported here by vicious crime gangs, like those headed by banged up Limerick boss Wayne Dundon.
Both the Colombian cartels and the Irish gangs who sell their wares here have been behind countless murders — and coke users here are directly feeding both groups.
The top detective said: “People are funnelling money to criminal groups at home and abroad. If people are going to a nightclub and they get a gram of cocaine, they don’t particularly care that somebody got shot out of it.
Chief Supt O’Sullivan was speaking in his first major interview since the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau was formed by Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan on 9 March.
That squad sprang from the merger of the force’s two main crime fighting organisations — the Organised Crime Unit (OCU) and the Garda National Drugs Unit (GNDU).
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JOINT POLICING: As well as taking on the gangs in Ireland, the new bureau deals with international policing agencies like the US DEA, to build better intelligence.
Target
We revealed yesterday that the chief believes his team has already directly prevented six gun murders since March in its anti-gangland role, but it is also the force’s main focal point in the war on drugs.
OCU was tasked with taking down major crime gangs, while GNDU was going after significant importers of drugs — but the lines between the two are now so blurred that the force needs one organisation to fight them.
Chief Supt O’Sullivan said: “If you look back at it historically, crime has changed hugely in the country… whatever criminals do, we have to develop a strategy and a structure and a process to target them. Going back, you could divide groups years ago to those who dealt in drugs and those who did bank robberies. Rarely did they overlap.
“But then the Celtic Tiger came along, cocaine came along, it was acceptable to sell drugs because people then knew what they were doing when they were buying and selling drugs.
“Armed robbers weren’t dealing with drugs because they didn’t understand them… heroin dealers only sold heroin because they had an understanding of it.
“There was a demarcation line — the demarcation line has stopped. Guys who are doing armed robberies also see profits in getting drugs in.”
Just one kilo of cocaine has the capacity to earn a gang more than €200,000 in turnover in Ireland. It costs around €5,000 to buy in South America and it is then sent to Europe, where Irish gangsters buy it in bulk for around €25,000 a kilo.
That kilo is itself worth some €210,000 in Ireland. Although a kilo costs some €70,000, each imported kilo is high in purity and is normally cut with other white powder to stretch it out to two or three kilos on the street.
Mr O’Sullivan also said young Irish criminals are attracted to cocaine because they use it and realise its massive profits.
He said: “They see the connections and say, ‘Well, look, if we got 20 grand here we could send somebody out or we could get stuff from Colombia or Spain or wherever else’.
“Over the years people become multi-skilled and have contacts in the drugs business and they have contacts in the armed robbery business. They are in the melting pot in Mountjoy and they are all talking to each other.
“It depends whether they go into tiger kidnapping and put their profits into drugs.
“Whatever makes money they are going to do. They see buying and selling drugs as a legitimate means of making money.”
Mr O’Sullivan said gangs are moving away from importing cannabis resin to smuggling cocaine — and growing their own cannabis plants here.
As well as targeting cocaine importers, Mr O’Sullivan’s unit has led the hugely successful Operation Nitrogen, a nationwide crackdown on cannabis growhouses — that has seen them seize more than 40,000 plants since 2013, worth €35 million.
And one of the main reasons for the upsurge in growhouses, he said, was that it meant not having to deal with outside criminals.
He said: “The thing to get your hands on years ago was slabs of hash, kilos of cannabis resin. You would get it in from Holland, or Spain.
“Whereas now the price of cannabis resin has dropped and the price of cannabis grass has gone up.
“You cut out the middle men, you cut out truck drivers and foreign criminals and foreign customs — and you can grow your own stuff and the potency of it is increasing.
“Things change all the time. Years ago there were no growhouses, there was very little cocaine… the market has changed.”
Mr O’Sullivan also said Irish people have been caught in the past trying to smuggle cocaine directly from South America to Europe — such as
Tyrone mule Michaella McCollum Connolly (22) — but most of the drug destined for this country was sourced in Spain, as it was simply easier to organise.
He also said modern communications meant it had never been easier to secure a cocaine consignment to smuggle into this country.
He said: “To us it is academic whether they are going out there or not. In Colombia, you can buy cocaine very cheaply.
Exto
BUST: Chief Supt O’Sullivan says, “Why reinvent the wheel, why just not talk to somebody that you know who is in Spain who knows a guy who knows a Colombian who can get you 10 kilos of this, or 20 kilos or half a tonne?”
Market
“Whether you contact a guy in Amsterdam who knows a Colombian in Amsterdam who knows a guy attached to a cartel… with
modern communications, you are a stone’s throw from picking up a phone to a guy in La Paz… or a guy in Amsterdam, or a guy in Ukraine or a guy in Istanbul.
“Gangs will go anywhere to get cocaine. There are a lot of Irish people living in Spain, a lot of UK criminals living in Spain.
He also warned that cartels would demand payment for cocaine shipments they send to Ireland — even if gardai intercept them.
“Somebody has to pay it and it has to be the Irish guys — or it depends on their credit. But somebody, somewhere, has to pay it and that frequently leads to difficulties,” he said.
Although there is much focus on major importers like Kinahan and George ‘The Penguin’ Mitchell — whom gardai believe both smuggle large amounts of drugs into Ireland – Mr O’Sullivan said Irish criminals will get their cocaine from whatever source they can.
He said: “There is a lot of play on somebody being the main player; people will go and make money on drugs with or without main players.
“You might not know the main player or you might not want to know him or you don’t trust him — and anyway, you want to do your market independently.
“Pockets of criminals will go and do what they see as profit. If the cash is there, they will try and leverage that cash by bringing in drugs — with or without a central main player.”
He also said some small-time gangs were smuggling in relatively minor amounts of cocaine, adding: “There are people like that who try to do it under the radar. Sometimes they get away with it, sometimes they don’t – they are taking a big risk.”
He added: “They want to increase their 10 grand; they are not going to go to a guy who is bringing in a big shipment because they think they will be ripped off.
“They keep it simple… you have to know what you are at and you have to have the contacts. But you have to understand the trade. They have to have a degree of experience and they have to have somebody who knows the ropes — somebody who has been caught in the past, somebody who can give them advice.
“Starting off in the business and [you think], ‘I know nothing about it, but I have 20 grand and I am going to do it’ — you won’t last.
SAFE TO USE
CRIMINAL: Chief Supt O’Sullivan said, “It’s a way of life. It’s not uncommon to find the grandchildren of people who were active in the 1970s and 1980s selling drugs.
Risks
“There are risks, it is fraught with difficulty. You could be sold a powder that’s not coke.”
The chief also said there were now drug dealers whose parents and grandparents had also been involved in the trade – especially heroin.
He said: “I’ve done fellas and I knew their grandfathers. There are people in certain parts of the city who are using heroin and their parents may have died from it, their grandparents may have died from it.
“It is unusual to see that — you would think children of addicts would have learned.”as economy recovers, more people turning to white powder without realising consequences
