The next chapter in Ireland’s narcotics saga is being written off our western seaboard, and this time, it’s largely being written by foreign actors. The details of a €152 million drugs bust on the MV Matthew continue to be aired in the Special Criminal Court this week, linking domestic Irish players from the Dubai-based Kinahan cartel, Venezuelan-based Hezbollah operators, and the Sinaloa cartel.
Ireland’s maritime gaps and a clampdown on traditional smuggling routes through Spain and the Netherlands have made our western seaboard a growing logistical hub for the transfer of cocaine to Europe. The result is a Pandora’s Box, the likes of which the state may not cannot comprehend until it’s too late.
Under pressure internationally as well as in the Republic, the Kinahan cartel, based in Dubai but with deep Irish roots, continues to broker South American cocaine into Europe, providing infrastructure and laundering networks on Irish and UK soil.
They are joined by the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, who facilitate Latin American cocaine logistics and launders profits through Europe, including via Irish shell companies and real estate.
While the model is fast mutating large cargo ships from Latin America anchor off Ireland’s coast and offload to smaller vessels (often local Irish boats) that bring drugs ashore at isolated coves.
This decentralised, low-visibility method reduces detection risk and exploits Ireland’s limited naval surveillance, allowing traffickers to fragment liability and obscure the supply chain.
Crucially, it enables cartels to integrate with local fishing and maritime economies, creating layers of deniability and complicating law enforcement efforts. As routes diversify, these drop-offs are increasingly supported by modular logistical hubs—rented barns, mobile distribution units, and legitimate trucking firms—allowing drugs to be quickly moved inland or onto ferries bound for the EU mainland.
The strategic implication is clear: Ireland is not just a waypoint, but a malleable node in a fast-evolving transatlantic smuggling network that is merging narco and terror finance in ways that blur jurisdictional lines and overwhelm traditional policing models.
This new conduit for Latin Coke being moved by Shia militants is a new threat vector as the Republic offers itself up as the soft belly for Western Europe.
What begins as profit-driven trafficking rapidly escalates into strategic leverage, as Hezbollah-linked actors use narcotics and laundering networks not only to fund operations in the Levant but also to establish footholds in Europe’s legal and logistical systems. Ireland, with its weak maritime defence, lax AML enforcement, and status as both an EU and Eurozone member, becomes an ideal entry point—not just for drugs, but for destabilising influence.
If escalation with Iran continues, these covert financial and logistical routes could be repurposed for sabotage, intelligence gathering, or proxy warfare, especially in a country outside but adjacent NATO structures. Ireland’s neutrality, once a shield, may now be a strategic blind spot, exploited by state-aligned non-state actors who see European drug networks as both a revenue stream and an infiltration mechanism. In this light, Ireland’s domestic crime problem is no longer just domestic—it is geopolitical.
Irish politicians aren’t ready. Our navy is underfunded. Intelligence is fragmented. And our laws are not built for this scale of convergence between crime, ideology, and global conflict
The risk of drug money and laundering networks penetrating Ireland is starkly illustrated by the rapid transformation of Belgium and the Netherlands into narco-states-in-miniature over the past two decades.
Once relatively peripheral to global trafficking, their ports in Antwerp and Rotterdam became central conduits for Latin American cocaine, bringing with them explosive growth in corruption, gang violence, and financial infiltration.
Politicians and port workers were compromised as cartels embedded themselves in legitimate logistics, real estate, and corporate structures. The laundering infrastructure evolved almost invisibly, facilitated by legal loopholes, shell companies, and weak AML enforcement. Ireland, with its small oversight capacity, opaque property markets, and growing exposure to transatlantic smuggling routes, now faces a similar risk profile.
The Belgian and Dutch experience shows how, within just a few years, drug profits can distort local economies, undermine institutions, and create a criminal ecosystem that becomes functionally untouchable without massive, systemic reform.
Ireland now stands at a strategic inflection point: either confront the emerging convergence of narco-trafficking and terror finance or risk becoming a permissive environment for transnational hybrid threats. Failure to act decisively will not only endanger public safety but could erode national sovereignty and Ireland’s credibility within the EU and the wider transatlantic security architecture.
Rather than vague accusations of Hezbollah involvement in the Cocaine trade I would like to see some actual evidence . They are very well funded by Iran so why should they get involved in the Cocaine trade ? The centre of the Latin American drug trade is Columbia not Venezuela and Lebanese cells operating in Latin America would stick out like a sore thumb . We know that the Kinahan’s have been dealing directly with the Cartels for several years and the local drug cartels would not take kindly to foreign competition . This article comes across as a hit piece and reminds me of accusations made back in the 1980’s that the Provos were involved in drug dealing even whilst communities in Dublin were going to them to clear out the Heroin dealers as there was no point in going to the Gardai .
The provos were dealing drugs, through the inla.
The link between the Iranian regime and Venezuela is longstanding. The links between hezbollah and the international drug trade is well established – this has been in the news for several years, and no, it’s not a false-flag or conspiracy. Jihadist groups are fully woven – in functional partnerships, not in other senses – with international criminal networks.
Hezbollah are funded by Iran, but Iran is struggling, and involved in numerous relatively small crypto-scams for returns at most in the tens of millions, for instance, to help sustain it. And drug deals like this one.
I think there are pieces here on the Burkean or in other articles linked from here showing that funds for hezbollah (and hamas) are being obtained through some parts of the pro-palestine movement here, leftist and islamist.
☘☘☘
Top of the World Paddy Boy…Cartels, Crime, Crims, and Corruption.
…and sure why not, maybe you can ask the O Gormless Grubment in 8 foreign languages the details of their successful IRELAND WIDE OPEN
POLICY,
…and maybe they should reply in 8 foreign languages, except Irish, to let
their criminal bros know that all the Fools thought it was about housing,
…and equally, in 8 Foreign languages explain how successful the effects
have been on Irish Homeless, Irish Homelessness, Irish UN-Affordability
On New Housing and Irish UN-Affordability on Rental,
…oh and while yer at it, in multiple foreign languages including English,
get your grubment to explain the extent of Open Border Corruption on
Irish Migration Crisis, Irish Infrastructure, Irish Health, Irish Education
and Irish Culture, Irish Foreign Crime and Irish Foreign Criminals
…on second thoughts, say fu.k all…just gaslight as usual because the success of Corruption, through Ireland Wide Open involves everything
and why bother explaining to a race of foolish, soft-touch, gullible and
equally gormless gombeens…it’s always worked before,no stopping now.
You should be more concerned with the Sinn Fein coke cartel and their Kerry connections with the Sinoala cartel, with our biggest meth bust ever and that James Leen, who is currently facing charges over the meth bust, is the son of Billy Leen, was the O/C of Kerry before Martin Ferris took over. Niall Connolly of the Colombia Three stayed with knuckle dragging Ferris ( taxi driver for cop killer Pearse McAuley) to be briefed before heading off to team up with the Colombian coke cartel. Don’t look at Hezbollah. Look at the Boys of the Old Brigade, who are at the heart of organised crime, as Gery Hutch and the rest of the Dublin Brigade touts sciuld tell you
Drug money profits are enormous, with plenty left over to bribe politicians ,police, Judiciary etc. treated as operating expenses.
Ask why there was such a massive cover -up of the Sophie du Plantier murder in the remote quiet West Cork area of Goleen ,with its many quiet inlets and beaches.
And the enormous effort and distraction, to shut down the case by indicting an innocent Patsy.
All indications are of a greater scandal ,than the murder of a lone woman, that would have opened a can of worms into Garda involvement in cocaine running in the area.
Nothing has changed, business as usual, it just got scaled up.
Hopefully the quality of the product will improve with the new franchisee’s