Fri. Dec 6th, 2024

Paul O’Brien, 56, organised the transportation of class A drugs and cash (Picture: NCA)

A career criminal from London who trafficked 10 kilos of cocaine and huge sums of cash across Europe has been jailed for 21 years.

Paul O’Brien was the mastermind behind a huge operation to transport the class A drugs with a street value of £1million from the Netherlands to Ireland via the UK.

The 56-year-old also then arranged for £780,000 in cash to be taken in the opposite direction from Ireland to the Netherlands.

He organised the deals and communicated with illegal couriers via an encrypted communications platform called EncroChat.

O’Brien’s international ploy was snuffed out by police and the National Crime Agency (NCA) and he was found to have been working alongside the now-convicted criminal Thomas Maher.

Maher, a wealthy haulage boss from Warrington, Cheshire was jailed for almost 15 years in 2020 for his own role in moving drugs and dirty money around the continent.

The 42-year-old had been identified during an investigation into the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants inside a lorry in Purfleet in October 2019 and was also found to have been using EncroChat to run a transportation network.

O’Brien used EncroChat to communicate with his accomplices (Picture: Jeppe Gustafsson/Shutterstock)

Police arrested O’Brien at his house in Uxbridge, south London, in May 2020 after he was found to be the man behind the username ‘ONEDIAMONDGEE’ on EcncroChat who was coordinating smuggling with Maher.

Conversations between the pair showed that on the morning of April 4, 2020, a car and HGV met near the village of Uddel in the Netherlands and exchanged the cocaine, which could have been worth up to £1million if sold in the UK, according to the NCA.

Maher told O’Brien that their couriers had successfully brought the drugs into the UK later that day and arrangements were made for it to be collected in Ireland.

On April 10, Maher organised for £260,000 belonging to O’Brien to be collected near Louth in Ireland and transported to the Netherlands by car.

O’Brien’s criminal co-worker Thomas Maher was also previously jailed for moving drugs and cash around Europe (Picture: PA)

A month later on May 11, a second pick-up of £520,000 was arranged by Maher for O’Brien, again to be taken by couriers from Ireland to the Netherlands.

The exchange took place at a bus station in Drogheda before Garda officers carrying out a surveillance operation intercepted the cash and arrested couriers Jason Reed, 42, Thomas Rooney, 53, and Catherine Dawson, 46.

More: Trending

O‘Brien’s EncroChat device was seized when he was detained and NCA investigators later arrested him for the cocaine and cash trafficking conspiracy.

He subsequently pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy to commit a crime abroad and was sentenced to 21 years in prison by a judge at Isleworth Crown Court on Friday.

O’Brien has been jailed for 21 years (Picture: NCA)

Police seized huge sums of cash from Maher (Picture: PA)

Martin Clarke, senior investigating officer at the National Crime Agency, said: ‘O’Brien is an established organised crime figure, as shown by his ability to join forces with a hugely influential drug trafficker like Thomas Maher. 

‘Together, they moved cocaine and hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash across Europe.

‘The crucial evidence obtained from his EncroChat handset laid bare O’Brien’s trafficking operation, leaving him with no option but to plead guilty.

 ‘The NCA is committed to targeting the controllers of international organised crime, who think they can distance themselves from their illegal activity and evade justice.

‘As Maher and now O’Brien have found, there is no limit to our determination to pursue those who see themselves as criminal kingpins and bring them to account.’

Maher was found to have been living the life of luxury with multiple flash cars parked on his driveway before he was caught (Picture: PA)

Another snap of cash seized by the NCA from Maher, who was working with O’Brien to smuggle cocaine and money between Ireland and the Netherlands via the UK (Picture: PA)

A tractor unit involved in the Vietnamese migrant deaths incident was previously owned by Maher and was still registered in his wife’s name after it was sold.

The full extent of his transportation network, which spanned Europe moving illegal commodities for organised criminals, was uncovered in a separate NCA investigation 

In May 2023, Maher was ordered to pay back more than £630,000 in criminal profits following a financial investigation.

On Friday, a police worker who illegally accessed sensitive information to tip off a criminal friend about a secret international investigation into serious crime using EncroChat was jailed.

Last month, the Metropolitan Police revealed that more than 420 people have been jailed in the last three years as part of an operation into criminals who use EncroChat to organise drug deals, launder money, and orchestrate violence.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

var notifyQ = function () {
var i = 0,
l = awaitingReady.length;
for (i = 0; i

Checkout latest world news below links :
World News || Latest News || U.S. News

Source link

The post London man transported £1,780,000 worth of cocaine and cash across Europe appeared first on WorldNewsEra.

By

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.