AN AVIATION broker known as “The Boxer” will be sentenced next week for conspiring to import €7 million worth of heroin and cocaine from Belgium.
Former Irish super heavyweight boxing champion John Kinsella (38) of Carne Wood, Johnstown, Navan, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Monday, a day before his trial, to conspiring with others to import the narcotics between September 22nd and 26th, 2006.
The trial had been expected to last more than six weeks with up to 130 witnesses.
Dutch authorities found 57kg (125½lbs) of heroin and 21kg of cocaine, worth an estimated €7 million, in the luggage of a passenger trying to board the private jet Kinsella had hired for a trip from Weston airport, Kildare, to Wevelgem, Belgium, and back on September 26th, 2006.
Kinsella had claimed he was “a victim of circumstance” after his arrest on September 26th at Weston airport and that a business associate, “Mr Barton Gregory”, had tricked him into the drugs run.
Det Garda Peter Gilligan of the Garda National Drugs Unit said Barton Gregory, described by Kinsella as possibly Algerian with black hair and a goatee, turned out to be a fictitious person when all attempts to trace him led to a “dead end”.
Det Gilligan told prosecution counsel, Pauline Walley, that Dutch police had set up a wiretap on the mobile phone of Scotsman James Rankin, a drug trafficking suspect who was based in the Netherlands in September 2006.
Det Gda Gilligan said a garda colleague travelled to Amsterdam and brought back a CD containing wiretap recordings of phone conversations between Rankin and Kinsella in the days leading up to the drugs bust.
Ms Walley, reading from the transcripts, pointed out that Kinsella mentioned arranging a “bird”, as in aircraft, in a phone call on September 25th, and in another call the same day told Rankin to make sure his “lad” was “dressed the part”. Rankin assured Kinsella that his “lad” was “suited and booted” with a laptop.
Det Gda Gilligan told Ms Walley that the man Dutch police arrested trying to board the private jet was dressed in a suit with a laptop bag and two wheelie suitcases full of drugs.
Ms Walley said Rankin indicated to Kinsella that there were 23 drug packages in each of the suitcases in a phone call at about 11.20am on September 26th, about the time the drugs courier was to board the jet at Wevelgem.
Kinsella responded: “It’s a lot . . . my name is on this.”
Det Gda Gilligan said there were a series of missed calls from Rankin to Kinsella following one at about 11.45am. On that call Kinsella said his plane was still on Belgian soil and the pilots weren’t answering their phones .
Det Gda Gilligan said the phone Kinsella had used to make these calls to Rankin, who has since been jailed for eight years in Belgium in relation to this offence, was never recovered by gardaí.
Kinsella, a self-made businessman, claimed in interview that he didn’t know Rankin or the drugs courier, who was jailed for three years.
Det Gda Gilligan told Ms Walley that Kinsella had flown to Morocco with “Gerard Byrne”, also known as Rankin, on June 17th, 2006. Gardaí also found two text messages from Rankin’s phone to a mobile discovered in a bedroom drawer at Kinsella’s house.
The detective garda told Ms Walley that Kinsella owed €30,000 to a former investor who had financed his company, Billionaire Ltd, and left the company in July 2006 after it failed to make returns.
Defence counsel Martin O’Rourke submitted to Judge Tony Hunt that his client had spared the taxpayer “considerable” expense by pleading guilty before a “long and complicated trial”. Judge Hunt acknowledged he would give Kinsella some credit for admitting his guilt.
However, he added that he had to structure the sentence around the seriousness of the offence, which carries a maximum of 14 years in prison.
He also accepted that Kinsella appeared not to have been “at the top of the Christmas tree” in this drugs enterprise and that there was at least one person above him.