Cork drugs haul: Two men charged over record €157m cocaine seizure

Two men have been charged over the seizure of cocaine valued at €157 million in Irish waters this week.

The pair, who are the first of seven people arrested to be charged, are due to appear before Wexford District Court on Friday having been in Garda custody since early last Monday.

The men - from Scotland and Ukraine - were winched to safety off a trawler that ran aground about 12km of the coast of Co Wexford late last Sunday night.

Gardaí believe their trawler got into difficulty as it was attempting to take delivery of cocaine from the MV Matthew Cargo ship.

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The two men on the trawler, which was bought from fishermen in Co Cork at the end of last week, were detained under Section 50 of the Criminal Justice Act.

Once they were in custody on Monday, attention switched to the much larger MV Matthew vessel off the coast of east Cork. On Tuesday members of the Army Range Winger fast roped from Air Corps helicopters on to its deck. They took control of that vessel, which had been trying to leave the area, forcing the crew of the LÉ William Butler Yeats to fire warning shots.

An examination of the vessel revealed 2.2 tonne of cocaine, which is believed to have been supplied by a Colombian cartel. The drugs were intended for distribution to gangs all over Europe, including Ireland, and gardaí suspect the Kinahan cartel helped to finance the load.

The other five men arrested were all crew members on the MV Matthew and are from Iran, Ukraine and the Netherlands. They were still being held by gardaí on Friday morning while 20 other crew members, some from the Philippines, were being interviewed, but had not been arrested.