The six men caught on board the bulk carrier MV Matthew with 2.2 tonnes of cocaine, and two others who attempted to take the illicit load on board a second vessel in the Irish Sea, have been jailed for a combined 129 years.
Passing sentence at the Special Criminal Court on Friday, Ms Justice Melanie Greally described the ship’s experienced and highly expert crew as “valuable components of the engine that drives international drug smuggling”.
The defendants were “committed to and invested in” the criminal enterprise on behalf of an organised crime group with “apparently unlimited resources”, the judge said.
The haul was valued at €157 million, the court heard.
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Having set headline sentences ranging from 30 years to 22 years, the three-judge court reduced each sentence after considering mitigating factors.
The longest sentence was given to Dutch national Cumali Ozgen (50), who received a 20-year term. Ms Justice Greally said he had the closest connection to the Dubai-based criminal organisation that planned and funded the operation.
Ozgen, Ukrainian nationals Mykhailo Gavryk (32) and Vitaliy Vlasoi (33), Iranian nationals Soheil Jelveh (52) and Saeid Hassani (39) and Filipino Harold Estoesta (31) previously pleaded guilty to the charge that between September 24th and 26th, 2023, at locations outside the State, they possessed cocaine for sale or supply on board the MV Matthew.
Vitaliy Lapa (62), of Rudenka, Repina Str, Berdyansk, Ukraine, and Jamie Harbron (31), of South Avenue, Billingham, England, pleaded guilty that on dates between September 21st and 25th, 2023, at a location within the State, they attempted to possess cocaine for the purpose of selling or otherwise supplying to another.
Ms Justice Greally sentenced Estoesta to 18 years; Jelveh to 17½ years; Vlasoi to 16½ years; Hassani to 15 years; Gavryk to 14 years; Lapa to 14½ years and Harbron to 13½ years.
The court previously heard that while the MV Matthew was sailing under the flag of Panama, it was owned by a Dubai-based company known as Symphony Marine. It departed from Curacao, off the Venezuelan coast, before being loaded with 2.2 tonnes of cocaine.
The court heard an organised crime group in Dubai instructed the crew as it attempted to evade law enforcement and deliver the drugs to an Irish vessel.
Despite repeated warnings from the Naval Service, including warning shots fired from the LE William Butler Yeats, the person overseeing the operation told the crew to keep going and head for a safe port in Sierra Leone.
The original plan was that the MV Matthew would deliver the drugs to a second ship, the Castlemore, but rough seas and technical difficulties caused the Irish vessel to miss the connection and later to run aground.
As the MV Matthew tried to evade capture, members of the Irish Army Rangers were lowered by rope ladder from a helicopter on to the ship’s deck.
The crew had tried to set the drugs on fire but the rangers acted quickly to quench the flames and save the evidence. One of the rangers, a former Naval Service member, steered the vessel to Cork Harbour.
Ms Justice Greally said a significant aggravating factor was that the operation was on behalf of a criminal organisation with international reach and “apparently unlimited resources to invest in transnational drug-trafficking”.
She said each defendant’s culpability was based on the “vast quantity” and value of the drugs, the meticulous planning of the operation and the group’s technical sophistication.
Cocaine is a “highly addictive drug which is causing widespread societal harm and dysfunction,” she said.
While none of the convicted men belong to the “upper echelons” of the criminal organisation and they did not own the drugs or stand to profit from their sale, Ms Justice Greally said they played an important role in the operation.
Apart from Ozgen and Harbron, they possessed a “high level of seafaring and navigational expertise,” which is vital to such operations, she said.
“Seafarers are not cogs but valuable components of the engine that drives international drug smuggling,” she said.
The judge said each defendant was “committed to and invested in the success of the venture”.
Ms Justice Greally noted that Ozgen and the officers on board the MV Matthew had given varying accounts of when and how they came to know of the illicit nature of the ship’s cargo.,
However, she said a failure to understand the purpose of the voyage would require a level of “wilful ignorance” that is “tantamount to knowledge”.
She pointed out that the MV Matthew is a large bulk carrier which left Venezuela for Gdansk, Poland with no cargo. While at sea, the ordinary seamen were plied with alcohol before armed men on board a second vessel lifted the drugs on board using a crane.
She said there was also evidence from a group chat being used by the officers that each of them knew that the MV Matthew was using “spoofing” software to misrepresent its location as it crossed the Atlantic.
