Details of an alleged “sting” involving the sale of £10 million worth of Viagra tablets and the IRA were discounted at the Smithwick Tribunal yesterday.
British agent Peter Keeley, also known as Kevin Fulton, who claims he went undercover as a volunteer in the IRA, told the tribunal the sting operation involved buying a million Viagra tablets from noted republican Patrick “Mooch” Blair.
Blair was convicted of terrorist offences in 1975 and had been targeted in 2003 by British intelligence agency MI5 after the Omagh bombing, he said. However, the deal never went through and Blair told the tribunal Keeley was “a fantasist” and never a member of the IRA.
Yesterday head of security at Pfizer Ireland Conor Hanlon told the tribunal Pfizer had never lost a million tablets through theft. He said only the component powder was made in Ireland and it was shipped to either Germany or France for final production processes.
Mr Hanlon said he had no information that Irish distributors would have stock levels of up to one million tablets.
Blair thought Keeley was a drug dealer and asked him if he could get rid of one million Viagra tables to which the IRA had access and which had been stolen from manufacturers Pfizer Ireland, Keeley said.