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FISHING BOAT OWNERS are turning to trafficking huge amounts of drugs into Ireland and countries across the African and European Atlantic seaboard due to dwindling fish stocks and to deal with debt, according to a senior European policing official.
This is the message from Sjoerd Top, the executive director of the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre – Narcotics (MAOC-N), the EU’s hub for analysing the drug trade coming into Europe, which is based in the Portuguese city of Lisbon.
The Journal sat down for an exclusive chat with Top about his team’s work and the current situation for organised crime and drug smuggling operations in the seas around Portugal, Ireland and other countries.
In a wide-ranging interview he spoke about the threat to the EU’s fishing communities and how drug smugglers in the Mediterranean are engaging in high-speed drug runs, as well as exploiting vulnerable migrants in people trafficking operations.
MAOC is based in a non-descript office block deep in the sprawling and picturesque Portuguese capital city.
Inside, the only signs that this building is involved in the serious business of drug interdiction are the images of military boarding parties and seized shipments on the walls.
In the boardroom the Irish flag stands proudly amongst the other member states and in an office nearby sit two Irish representatives – one from Revenue Customs and the other a garda detective. Ireland has sent the officers to facilitate the sharing of Irish intelligence with the other partner nations.
Top is a senior Dutch law enforcement officer seconded to the centre which was previously led by former garda Deputy Commissioner Michael O’Sullivan.
MAOC-N is an initiative by six EU member states: France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Portugal, as well as the United Kingdom, co-funded by the Internal Security Fund of the European Union.
The role of the team in Lisbon is one of intelligence facilitation: they receive information gathered by member states and then build a picture to coordinate the response.
They don’t do the investigation but instead analyse details such as the owners of boats involved in drug running, the identities of the crews, and see if there are any connections between them and the organised criminals shipping massive quantities of drugs to the European continent.
As reported by The Journal, large quantities of drugs come to Europe from South America on board cargo ships via Dutch ports, but MAOC-N is dedicated only to dealing with smaller vessels which are making the crossing from South America and Africa with large quantities of drugs onboard.
Ireland has seen the benefit of its involvement with MAOC-N: sailing vessels carrying tonnes of drugs have been intercepted before they could reach the island, and even a small light aircraft flying from Dieppe in France to Abbeyshrule in County Longford was stopped.
There are a multitude of routes in but Top said a key issue is that members of fishing fleets are allowing their vessels be used for trafficking. He was keen to stress that it is not the whole of the fishing community but rather individuals within it.
“Organised crime groups always try to search for the best opportunity to corrupt people and most of the time, those are people that have a lack of money and a lot of problems, financial problems,” he said.
“We are all aware that the fishing communities are having a hard time at the moment because of economic problems, but also welfare and environmental issues regarding fishing.
“If there is no fish to be found because there was too much fishing, they don’t make the money. If they did a big investment in their vessels, they cannot make the money [to pay off the loan] for that by fishing, then they will probably find another solution. And that could also be getting involved in organised crime groups,” he added.
Top said fishing vessels are acting as so-called donor vessels that sail from a port in Ireland or elsewhere to meet a “mother ship” which is carrying the bulk of the drugs deep in international waters.
It is not just hard-up fishing captains either – Top said there is also a problem with people in the yachting fraternity allowing their vessels to be used.
“Organised crime is always looking for vulnerable people – it’s very easy for them to ask you to do a very small favour, because probably the first time they won’t ask you to bring in five tons of cocaine.
“They will ask you to do a small job with some good money but the next time they will ask you to do a much bigger shipment and when you say no they will tell you that they will go to the police about the original job,” he added.
Top said MAOC-N has become aware of cases across Europe and Africa where police officers, customs, dock workers and politicians are all in the pay of organised crime.
“After the first step, it’s very, very difficult to get out. So that’s a huge warning to people: don’t do this small job where you think, ‘okay, that doesn’t really harm me or the society’,” he said.
It was clear that Top was aware of some of the coverage in Ireland around the capabilities of the Irish Naval Service.
He did not address resourcing concerns directly but instead said: “Since my tenure as a director started we have never asked the support of the Irish authorities where they said that they are not able to support us in a case.”
The Journal confirmed this with multiple security sources in Ireland familiar with naval operations, with one stating firmly: “Everything else gets dropped when MAOC calls”.
Top said that it is not just an Irish issue as the war in Ukraine has put pressure on naval assets across Europe. He said that they are seeing navy ships and aircraft sent on specific maritime security operations now to monitor situations arising from that war.
The director added that instability in Africa, particularly in the sub-Saharan Sahel region, was being exploited by drug gangs but said that there was evidence that terrorist groups were using the drugs smuggling trade to fundraise.
One key route for drugs from South America has been through Cape Verde and Senegal on the west coast of Africa and then up through the continent to fast boats which then cross into Europe. Top said there was growing evidence also that people traffickers operating in North Africa were also heavily involved in the drugs trade.
He said the US Coast Guard was now operating in the seas near Cape Verde and off the coast of Senegal and elsewhere to combat the flow of drugs. The US is engaged in this operation as it has adopted an approach to target drug smugglers from South America cartels regardless of their locations. They are not the only navy out there with many European ships, including Ireland, watching on.
On the day we meet, Top hinted that military and law enforcement officers were monitoring a shipment in the Atlantic, waiting to intercept it.
As it turned out later, that operation was a success: the Spanish National Police intercepted a yacht carrying 2.7 tonnes of cocaine approximately 600 natical miles south-west of the Canary Islands. It was a supply of drugs linked to a Balkan organised crime group.
The seizure brought MAOC-N over the line with over 1,000 tonnes worth of drugs being intercepted since it was founded in 2007.
While that operation concludes, other operations continue – Top finishes the interview and makes his way to a meeting with plain clothes experts from a European country.
As we leave MAOC-N’s office we observe the waiting investigators clutching intelligence folders – the next opportunity to increase the tonnage record.
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Unbelievable. Leaving the EU is increasing becoming more attractive!
@Munster1: increasingly
@Munster1:
We are not that stupid.
@Someone Financing The Welfare Leeches: Whether Brexit went well is a moot point. They were lab rats and chose to be so. But the EU is a busted flush. Spain, Italy and Greece haven’t a washer between them. Hungary Bulgaria and Romania are practically bankrolled by Russia and the wealthy North couldn’t give a toss about these states.
@Corporal clegg:
People have been saying its a busted flush since March 26th 1957, 66 years ago.
@P.J. Nolan: You’ve lost me there I’m afraid.
@Munster1: knobb
@Someone Financing The Welfare Leeches: “Brexit went well”. Ya fkn lunatic. Uk is fkd. Wise up.
@Munster1: Russian bot farm hard at work, thankfully the Irish aren’t as naive our British neighbors and we won’t be leaving the EU
@Someone Financing The Welfare Leeches: Even worse than that, it would be a 3rd world country that would be isolated and subservient to the UK.
The EU is far from perfect, and there is a steady movement towards a United States of Europe by en-elected bureaucrats, but Ireland would be a lot worse off outside of the EU.
@Munster1: Now that’s a great idea, throw away all the influence we have on EU policy and go it alone because Ireland has so much global influence and is so attractive to foreign investment with no access to European markets.
@IPatrick Robinson: He is sarcastic when he says brexit went well.
He means the opposite. Brexit has harmed the UK economy.
@Corporal clegg: he’s saying you’re talking nonsense. He’s correct
@Munster1: that’s working out just dandy for the uk isn’t it. You can easily leave the EU if you like just hop a plane and head to the uk
@Pat Barden: Or even just drive up to the North.
@Munster1: and go back to Dev’s Ireland. No thanks
@Munster1: no it’s not. What a ridiculous thing to claim.
By the way, feel free to move to England so you can experience the amazing benefits of leaving the EU.
Lol.
Are we supposed to feel sorry for them?
“It’s not my fault I trafficked huge amounts of drugs into the country, I don’t make enough money.”
In what other line of work would that stance earn you sympathy?
@Don Johnson: When you’re steadily getting deeper in debt facing the prospect of the bank repossessing your only source of income and someone offers you enough money to get you out of the hole for a bit of smuggling the temptation to say “just this once” is going to be there and the second time is just that bit easier.
Then of course when it all goes pear shaped with customs gun boats you lose everything and gain a prison sentence but the real losers are your family who weren’t involved when you made the wrong decision.
So don’t feel sorry for them, feel sorry for the others who suffer the consequences.
It would be far better for them not to be exposed to this temptation.
@Don Johnson: are YOU supposed to feel sorry for them?
I’m not sure you’re even capable of normal human emotion, so no, YOU are not.
Do people with normal levels of empathy and sympathy feel sorry for them?
Yes. Yes they do.
“Donegal Stash” now available in your local supermarket…
This has been going on for years. If you destroy an income source, people will find alternatives. In fishing rights alone we have contributed more to the EU than we have got back.
When will we stop messing around and introduce the death penalty for drug trafficking? In countries that don’t buy the “ah he had a hard life, ah he grew up in a disadvantaged area” BS, drug trafficking simply doesn’t happen. Drug dealers and traffickers inflict misery not just on communities but entire family units. Meanwhile judge Nolan will let them off the hook because Irish society is afraid of proper responsibility for your actions.
@Sean Murphy:
The countries that have the death penalty still have to use it, ie they still have drug smuggling.
Anyone who thinks we can defeat the drug scourge by ever increasing laws is delusional at this stage.
The war on drugs was lost years ago.
@Sean Murphy: thats a ridiculous comment.. Many of the countries with the death penalty for drug trafficking are on the silk road where much of the worlds drugs transit. Clearly the death penalty isnt working.
@Sean Murphy: wow…28 people that agree with you.
@Sean Murphy: what an uninformed and evil suggestion
@Sean Murphy: death penalty idea is just a bad and wrong idea, obviously, but just for the record, your casual cruelty about the impact of what you call disadvantage is disgusting. What you call disadvantage is the 5 year old child whose parents are addicts, who goes to sleep and wakes up hungry every day, who is raped and abused, who is beaten and neglected, who grows up with no hope or chance for a better future, with a body and a brain that carry profound trauma into adulthood, into an adult world that looks back at them with hatred and disgust, and, like you, dismisses all that has happened to them as “BS”. Should be ashamed of yourself.
Of course, this was always going to happen. When the Government of Ireland dilutes the Naval Service so much that it is no longer fit for purpose, what do you expect. They might as well put up a sign saying that our coastline is not protected. Prevention is always better than cure. Stop the drugs getting in, and the crime rates and associated violence might go down. You won’t stop it with only two operational Naval vessels.
@Niall McHugh: You won’t stop it with two hundred vessels either. Look how much the US DEA waste trying and failing to stop cocaine flying in from Bolivia. The cocaine smugglers regard whole aircraft as disposable.
Good job, we have practically decimated the tiny naval service we had…what is it now? 2 ships out of 8 can be crewed. And this is because we won’t pay a decent wage while running a hugh surplus and handing over hundreds of millions to hotals. Makes perfect sense
Ya the haulage industry is suffering the same fate.
@Mic JHintl: No great surprise we hand a multi billion Euro business to organised crime and they use some of the money to tempt people into working for them.
Perhaps we should take the business off them and bring it into the light of regulation and licensing.
Prohibition has failed to do anything but make things get steadily worse.
Long since past time for a new approach based on reality not wishful thinking.
@Mic JHintl: Your industry needs a massive over’haul’ that’s sees more drivers off the roads. Sorry, but it’s coming.
@Thesaltyurchin: why apologise to me? Why put drivers off the road. We have a massive drivers shortage already which suggests that many are already off the road. So im unsure of what point your trying to make.
@Steve O’Hara Smith.: yes true but in relation to drug transportation in a legalised environment i doubt that road transport would benefit hugely from it.
@Mic JHintl: No they wouldn’t, large as it is the drug business is only a tiny fraction of the freight business. Indeed some hauliers would lose a source of illicit tax (but not risk) free money.
@Mic JHintl: Apologies I had thought you were a truck driver. New approaches needed across the board. Too many trucks on our roads.
@Thesaltyurchin: i am a truck driver. Too many trucks on the road? I dont disagree. Thats why the industry is on its knees. Too much competition & poor practices like hiring cheaper labour from overseas. If the prices go up and wages then im all for reducing competition. People are paying way too little for transport.
Anyone caught taking drugs take a finger off everytime. Anyone caught bringing drugs into the country take a hand off. Any cartel members such as kinahans caugh,go to your nearest hardware store buy a nice rope,and find the nearest tree.
@John finn: And anybody caught drinking alcohol should be made to wash their mouths out with soap.
@John finn: Emmmmmm…why don’t you just move to some barbaric state there where you’ll be happy with your own blood thirsty kind, we’ll stay here, ok chuck, great.
@John finn: Do you drink tea, coffee, alcohol, smoke or vape nicotine or eat chocolate?
These are all drugs!
@Steve O’Hara Smith.: when was the last time you seen someone getting mugged and beaten so an addict could their fix of a curly wurly
@John finn: they’ll just start growing extra fingers and hands John, you know they’re not really human. Don’t know why you went well bleeding heart for the cartels though, making them a nice swing to play on. Kill them with kindness, I suppose? You clever fox.
@michael odwyer: Quite so, things are better when the drugs are legal because crime is not involved.
@John finn: Do you know that alcohol is the second biggest killer drug on the planet, second only to nicotine.
@John finn: man the head choppers in the middle east would be proud of ur thinking
@John finn: nothing like violently disfiguring the mentally ill…
Honestly, between you and a drug addict, I’ll choose a drug addict.
FFG totally destroyed the Irish fishing industry . We are an island with no rights to fish in it’s on waters. One of our greatest assets given away . It’s worth billions
Why can’t anyone comment anymore on articles other than sports, food or something and stuff on irrelevant crap that isn’t true? I remember the journal 30 years ago being a hotbed of debate. Rubbish now. Well done bots.
@mossy baluck: 30 years ago mossy i was chasing mehole(not the righteous one mind you) ye must be ancient!!
@mossy baluck: a hotbed of debate. Lol… You’re funny… It was and still is a hotbed of irritated auld foogies who belittle and deregrade at every posoble chance. Debate me asre. But your comment is still value for a lol.
@mossy baluck:
Yeah back in 1993 when we all had the internet…
BS much?
Quite Ireland On-Line started the first mass market dial up shell account service in January 1994. Prior to that the only provider was the extremely expensive IEUnet.
Yet another reason we need to take this business away from organised crime and bring it into the light of regulation and licensing.
That which festers in the dark is always going to be nasty.
A very fishy situation indeed.
What an appalling general headline wow.
Ah we’ve all been there
Pity they can’t smuggle Electricity
And of course, we live in a country where getting psychiatric help is an expensive multi-year process, whereas buying drugs takes about 30 secs.
‘Ireland has seen the benefit’
What benefit? As in there’s no drugs for sale? Or people find it hard to get them? The country (like pretty much everywhere else) is awash with drugs. I doubt there is a single interruption in the supply chain.
The headline grabbing seizures will be factored in and costed in as a price of business. Anytime I see people posting comments of celebration about a drug bust I immediately know they haven’t a single clue about how this business works. There are endless documentaries detailing how little these busts mean to the cartels and gangs. Celebrating over a few grains while a mound makes its way through. As ever the reality of the situation simply isn’t hitting home.
There is no war on drugs. That suggests a battle and the possibility of victory. It’s over. It’s done. There isn’t enough man power to make a dent in the trade. Celebrate locking up a few players while a full subs bench waits to enter the field. Round and round we go.
What people don’t realise is ,ok we know that the war against drugs is lost but the money generated from trying to stop it is an industry itself the amount of jobs created is huge so the money keeps people in houses ,living etc
Any cheap boars for sale
It sounds like they are victims rather than drug smugglers!? what a strange angle to take
Steve are tax inspector or just of your box
@Paul Moloney: Are you asking me?
The only drugs I’ve taken in recent weeks are my daily (large) mug of real coffee and some chocolate. I am quite fond of cannabis and would welcome a legal source.
As for tax, I last worked for the taxman as a contract software developer around 1990.
I do however think that it would be better for the drug business to be a taxpaying benefit to the country than the expensive and failing enforcement mess that it currently is.
Drug use is, and always has been 99% a result of societal issues.
Instead of addressing those, we simply allow them, and drug use run rampant, and of course ensure that the mafia/drugs gangs have more money than the rest of us could ever dream of.
In Ireland we also make sure there’s no resources for healthcare, we shame the sick and the poor, and we make sure that the societal issues which lead to drug use are exacerbated, so they become intergenerational.
If there was a recipe for the absolute worst policies, which helped the worst people, hurt the innocent, and put the most financial strain on all of us, Ireland has probably discovered it.
Having read the article thoroughly, there’s a few major takeaways:
- Every years there’s a new record for how many drugs are confiscated by police
But
- Drugs have never been easier to get.
- Drugs are available everywhere eg even our prisons are flooded with them
- We spend billions trying to stop them
- We always fail, utterly.
- We don’t have the resources to lock up everyone involved in the drugs trade.
- We don’t even bother trying any other approach, despite the fact that we are not even vaguely succeeding at stopping the flow of drugs into our country.
- Drugs gangs have never been richer or more powerful.
These obvious contradictions lead to legalisation of marijuana in the US. And things are trending that way in the EU.
Ireland can lead and make billions in taxes, and invest that back into society, to reduce harm and stop drug use the only way possible – making society better for all, not just rhe very rich – but it won’t.
Instead – as with abortion – we’ll follow the path of ‘most harm, least benefit’ because out politicians are cowards. And because we as a society hate the poor. Hate and actively wish them ill.
@Chris O’Brien: Just one detail, we legalised abortion with a very reasonable 12 week limit.
You gotta be cod ing me, def something fishy about this deal.
Good man Steve get it into life is for living and anything that makes it easier should be expected and live and let live
Hold on… was this not going on since boats were invented
have your say