Nicola Tallent

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I'm Nicola Tallent, and this is Crime World, a podcast about criminals, drugs and the sins of the underworld.

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A plot to import 42 million euro worth of cocaine into Ireland through the Shannon Estuary was undone when Gardaí arrested seven men, but not before the drugs were landed successfully and disappeared into the criminal underworld.

Today I'm talking to Eamon Dillon about the daring journey from Brazil's Amazon to Ireland's biggest river and those who were nabbed in the process.

You're listening to Crime World, a podcast from crimeworld.com.

So Eamon, we're going to talk today about a very intriguing foiled, well, foiled for some, but the actual cargo managed to make it, a drug plot that started really only coming up to Christmas of last year.

And we have seen the seven men that were arrested in connection with it have pleaded and we've

been to their sentence hearings so we've heard their mitigating circumstances and why they got involved.

So start with this ship that is

All of that was headed or was the boat going?

So he's in charge of the store where it's been held.

Now there's 21 crew members in total on board this ship, the MV Royal, and 18 of them have no idea that there's cocaine on board.

Pop them off into the Shannon Estuary where a rib boat or something.

And while evidence was given in relation to him, we also heard that he had post-traumatic stress disorder and some psychiatric problems brought on by some of what he saw when he was working in these regions, including at one point there was a car bomb went off in front of him and some of his colleagues were killed along with some local people.

And that seemed to

affect him greatly.

And his life kind of derails, we're told, in 2020 after working for a long period of time on Good Money in these regions.

It wasn't mentioned, but would COVID have had anything to do with that, with his work?

Would he have been, you know, out of work?