28/04/2009

Third Cocaine Man Pleads Guilty

Another man has admitted his role in one of Ireland's biggest drug seizures.

David Mufford, 44, from Devon, pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to supply at Cork Circuit Criminal Court this week.

The 1.9 tonnes of cocaine, worth about €675 million (£610m), were recovered off the Irish coast in 2007.

Mufford, of Clennon Lane, Torquay, will be sentenced on 8 May with Philip Doo, from Brixham, Devon, and Christopher Wiggins, from Malaga, Spain after Doo and Wiggins pleaded guilty to the same charge last week.

The three men were arrested after the drugs, from South America, were recovered on board a yacht, Dances With Waves.

The case came to light after the Irish navy boarded the boat in what had become an emergency situation.

This was amid fears it might sink as it struggled to stay afloat in the Atlantic Ocean in November 2007.

The vessel had left the Caribbean a month earlier and it later emerged that European intelligence agencies had been tracking the boat across the Atlantic before the raid by the Irish authorities, 170 miles (273km) off the coast of west Cork.

The seizure exceeded a previous haul of 1.5 tonnes of cocaine, valued at €440 million (£323m), which washed up on the Cork coast near Mizen Head in July 2007 after an elaborate trafficking scam fell apart.

(BMcC/JM)

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