Cocaine haul - castletownbere

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shootingstar

Registered User
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Had a few calls today into my office looking for images of the cocaine etc with a few smart comments saying "jaysus have ye corkies ran out of the last batch already" !!

1.5 tons of coke, nearly twice as much as last year.
2nd time in 15 months...

just thought i`d mention it here...
 

ironically caught on the day one of teh traffickers from last year was sentenced!
 
makes a change from when Howard Marks was shipping containers of weed through Shannon airport and then driving them to the UK without so much as a 'by your leave' !
 
Love how they were tracking the boat all the way from the Carribbean but waited until it got to Europe before they busted it? Why?

Well heres why. The reported haul is around 700m euro (or USD$900m) for 1.5 tonnes. Lets assume for a second that it is pure cocaine, unadulterated pure cocaine at non-retail prices. At that valuation it puts the value of 1 gram of pure cocaine at 466 euros or USD$600! WTF!!!! $600!

The DEA in the states last year reported that the price of 1 gram of pure cocaine from all sources (retail, wholesale) on average had risen from wait for it...$95 to $118 due currency and other factors. Even the wholesale price of 1 gram of cocaine floats in and around $35 mark.

The reason for the discrepancy is the the distance from source, cocaine costs more the further it is away from Columbia. So at the DEAs US price the haul would have been at best US$217m (using retail price of $145) or at worst USD$52m (using wholesale prices) for the very same 1.5 tonne haul. You also have to take into account some of the crazy previous valuations that the Gardai have smacked on things and there you have a receipe for some seriously over-priced marching powder.

Which sounds better as a PR exercise $52m or $900m? It was the only reason the boat was allowed to remain at sea for a month.
 
Would they have had the right to board the ship in international waters no matter what they suspected it was carrying?

Murt
 
majik said:
... Even the wholesale price of 1 gram of cocaine floats in and around $35 mark. ...
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I have to agree with your main point, that the valuation placed on drug seizures by authorities in Ireland is nothing short of fantasy.

I remember another seizure some years ago that valued ecstasy tablets at €15 each - street prices at the time were €2 each max.

But do bear in mind that by the time cocaine reaches a consumer in Ireland, it will have been adulterated 2 or 3 times and passed through 4 or 5 levels of the distribution network, each of them adding their percentage.
 
majik said:
Which sounds better as a PR exercise $52m or $900m? It was the only reason the boat was allowed to remain at sea for a month.
Click to expand...

The Irish authorities caught the people on the boat , bid deal, after being tipped off and tracked ( by other agencies ) from central America. Would it not have been better to try to catch the people who would have collected it / taken it ashore as well ?
 
Well it looks like we now have the Asgard III, for a greatly reduced price to joe tax payer. Still dont know howt they managed to damage on of the ribs.
 
Just out of interest what do customs do with these hauls? Burn it, flush it down the loo ?! Although I imagine there would be a blockage with this amount !
 
How about the Govt selling the cocaine and pocketing the €500m. It would go a bit of the way to solving the Budget deficit.
 
Conan said:
How about the Govt selling the cocaine and pocketing the €500m. It would go a bit of the way to solving the Budget deficit.
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There must be a legal use for the drugs - the active agent is still a part of many medications. Would the quality of the drug be too poor to use for pharmaceutical purposes, or would it just be unethical for it to be appropriated and sold?
 
i agree, they should sell the drugs to pharmacuetical companies, and what they sell it for can pay for the costs of the court cases, the imprisoment of all these crinimals, the tax payers are paying for this as it is!
 
Don't forget that the famous cliche about law enforcement getting only 10% of what's imported illegally drugwise comes from 'law enforcement' themselves.
There really needs to be some serious thinking about the valuations accorded illegal drugs. It's just plain daft to leave that to the Customs or the Gardai as both have a vested interest in distorting the actual value, i.e. a high valuation becomes a justification for their existence. But maybe those multi million valuations is what attract some of the traffickers to get involved in the first place. Seems like there's no quicker way to make a million than via the drug route.
 
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