David Huck had been a lucky criminal. One of Europe's most successful drugs-runners, he made his fortune in the 1980s and 1990s smuggling drugs from North Africa into Europe and North America. For much of the time he was based in Co Clare. Despite the intense interest in his activities from Interpol and European police forces, he always managed to keep one step ahead.
Even when things went wrong - as with the seizure of his drugladen yacht, the Brime, off the Kerry coast in 1993 - Huck managed to slip the net, later watching from a safe distance as accomplices were jailed.
But his luck finally ran out off the coast of Cornwall last October when British Customs caught him aboard another yacht with £10 million sterling worth of cannabis. Yesterday, at Exeter Crown Court, Huck and a group of men who worked with him were sentenced for conspiring to smuggle the cannabis into Britain. Huck's role as main organiser was recognised when he received the longest sentence - 14 years.
His conviction and imprisonment are a coup for the British authorities and a cause for celebration among gardai who had questioned him about the Brime in 1993, but were obliged to release him without charge.
Huck initially masterminded his illegal empire from his home in Ibiza in Spain, where he started as a cigarette smuggler before graduating to drugs. He arranged the purchase of cannabis in North Africa and its transport by yacht to Britain and mainland Europe, and at least once across the Atlantic to Canada. After being linked to a series of intercepted smuggling operations, Huck became a focus of attention for Interpol and European police forces, and in 1988 he moved to the Republic, shifting part of his fortune into Irish bank accounts and buying a home in Co Clare.
At the time, Huck regarded the Republic as a safe haven for a major drug-smuggler. The Irish coast was relatively unguarded compared to British and Dutch waters, and the numerous hidden inlets of the south and west coast lent themselves to smuggling operations. Assets-seizing legislation had not been drawn up in the Republic, so there was little risk of losing his money to clever lawyers working for the State.
In Clare he set himself up as a businessman, a suave well-dressed figure with the sports car, year-round tan and flashes of jewellery which betoken success. But some of his businesses were of dubious merit. One was supposed to manufacture automatic wheelchairs, but potential investors who gathered for a demonstration lost interest when the prototype broke down after a few minutes. "Lack of funds cripples wheelchair venture," a local newspaper reported.
Huck's real interest was in the cannabis run, from North Africa into European countries. The scale of his operations is evident from the instances in which he was caught or nearly caught. In 1993, the Brime carried cannabis which the Garda estimated had a street value of up to £20 million. The Fata Morgana yacht seized by the British last year had cannabis estimated at £10 million sterling.
How many shipments got through will never be known, but if drug-running was legitimate Huck could certainly have expected to be featured in business magazine lists of Europe's richest entrepreneurs.
Until last October, when he was caught on the Fata Morgana off Cornwall, the Brime interception off Ireland was his closest brush with the law. Huck had bought and refurbished the ketch some years earlier, and in 1993 sent it to Morocco, where it collected a cargo of cannabis and headed for the Kerry coast. Another yacht, travelling from Wales, was to meet it off the coast to collect the drugs, which were to be landed in the Republic and transported to Britain.
The crew of the Brime was unaware that the yacht had been spotted by the French authorities and its voyage towards Ireland was being monitored. The yacht from Wales, meanwhile, pulled into Ballinskelligs Bay in Co Kerry for repairs, and gardai were alerted by locals suspicious about the two men on board.
The boat was boarded by gardai, who arrested the men when they found a small quantity of drugs on board.
Before the arrests the men had apparently contacted Huck seeking his help, and when he arrived at the yacht he too was arrested.
The gardai were suspicious that the presence of the yacht from Wales, and Huck himself, might be connected to the impending arrival of a drugs shipment. But they had no evidence. Like many practised criminals, Huck talked for hours under questioning - but he revealed nothing.
The gardai were obliged to release Huck from custody that weekend. He took a flight from Dublin to London first thing on Monday morning.
Later that day the Brime crew, now close to the coast, made their first contact with the Republic, making a call to a mobile telephone seized by gardai during further arrests on shore. A garda took the call, pretended to be an accomplice of Huck, and lured the Brime to its successful interception off Loop Head by the Naval vessel LE Orla.
The four members of the Brime crew were each jailed for 10 years. In court a garda said one of them had refused to reveal the identity of the Brime's owner because he was afraid he would be shot. Huck had got away, abandoning possessions in Ireland, including two houses and land in Co Clare. Lawyers acting for him in the Republic later began selling properties on his behalf.
Last October, Huck was in action again, sailing towards the British coast on the yacht Fata Morgana with a cargo of cannabis from North Africa. A tug sailed out to meet it, carrying undercover British Customs officers masquerading as gang members.
The cannabis was loaded on to the tug, which headed for the coast where Huck's shore party was waiting. But as the Fata Morgana was boarded and its crew arrested, the Customs tug sank in heavy seas. The officers on the sinking vessel escaped unharmed. Other cannabis in the possession of Customs was used to make the delivery expected by the gang's shore party at Falmouth, Cornwall.
Earlier this year, with Huck in custody in Britain, the Criminal Assets Bureau in Dublin moved against the remainder of his properties in Ireland, obtaining a High Court injunction stopping him from reducing his assets in the State below £475,000. The bureau sent Huck a tax bill, which, with interest, is now for more than £500,000. As of yesterday he had not paid. It is expected that the bureau will now move to seize and sell his remaining assets in the State.