An Irish disc jockey hid 31,000 ecstasy tablets with a street value in the Netherlands of more than 600,000 guilders (£200,000) in a child's buggy in his Amsterdam apartment, a court here was told yesterday. Dublin-born Mr Liam Gregory Fynes was described as a leading participant in a major drug smuggling operation in which hundreds of kilos of soft drugs and tens of thousands of ecstasy tablets were shipped from Holland to Ireland and Britain.
He was charged with possession with intent to transport 31,000 E tablets and over 100 kilos of soft drugs including hashish and with membership of a criminal organisation, before judges at the Zwolle criminal court in the Netherlands.
Millions of tablets may have been handled by the drugs gang to which the 41-year-old Irishman belonged until it was dismantled by Dutch police using the code-name "The Dream Team", judges heard. Five Dutch nationals were also charged with organising hard and soft drugs shipments out of Holland to Ireland and Britain between 1996 and 1998. Among them was Mr Dave Maertens, who together with Mr Fynes was named during the trial of convicted Cork drugs trafficker Sean O'Flynn here last December.
O'Flynn (48), of Arigadeen Lawn, Togher, was jailed for two years for trafficking 25,000 E tablets. Both men (Mr Maertens and Mr Fynes) were secretly filmed by Dutch police and had their phones tapped as O'Flynn arrived in Amsterdam in August 1998 and arranged for the handover of large amounts of E tablets.
The arrest of O'Flynn and subsequent developments in the case came as a result of a major surveillance operation involving the Garda National Drugs Unit, the Cork drugs squad and Dutch anti-drugs units. Mr Fynes, a native of Dublin with addresses in Britain and Amsterdam, was a vital go-between negotiating with criminal buyers in Ireland, arranging payments, handling hundreds of thousands of pounds and ensuring that shipments of drugs were taken out of the country, the court was told.
But the drugs trafficking gang's lucrative business started to collapse after the "Dream Team" operation began and Dutch police stepped up intensive scrutiny of their activities in the spring of 1998 as a result of which controlled drugs shipments of theirs went missing and were intercepted abroad.
One such shipment involved 200 kilos of hashish loaded by Mr Fynes into his own car in the middle of Amsterdam on June 30th, 1998, in boxes concealed under fishing tackle and camping gear he had been observed buying.
On October 6th last, Mr Fynes's rented apartment was raided by police who discovered 31,000 E tablets packed in bags of a thousand hidden in a child's buggy.
When questioned he claimed the tablets belonged to two friends "John" and "Michael" who sometimes stayed with him. In court Mr Fynes said that since his release from prison in England for convictions involving drugs and violence and his arrival in Holland a year and a half ago he was employed as a disc jockey at house parties and also dealt in second-hand vehicles.
His Dutch lawyer said he admitted packing hashish shipments for "other people" but did it to support a cocaine habit and because he "owed those who were supplying him". Judges will give their verdict in the case in two weeks (on April 13th). A jail sentence of four years was demanded by the prosecution.