Drug smugglers outnumber crimefighters on Atlantic’s ‘cocaine superhighway’

A hundred vessels suspected of trafficking drugs across a ‘cocaine superhighway’ to the UK and Europe slipped through the net last year, according to an investigation. 

The ships were detected in the Atlantic but there were no boats available to intercept them, an international crime-fighting organisation said.  

The Maritime Analysis Operations Centre (MAOC) monitors up to 600 vessels each day while record amounts of cocaine are produced in South America, director Sjoerd Top told the BBC. 

He said: ‘We have the intelligence of the vessel that’s crossing the Atlantic… that it’s loaded at that time, and still we don’t have the interception assets available.’ 

So far this year, the MAOC, an initiative by the UK and eight EU member states to police the Atlantic drug trade, has seized almost 50 tonnes of cocaine, with just over half being from sailing vessels.

The huge market for cocaine is evident in National Crime Agency figures showing UK users consumed 117 tonnes of the drug last year. 

Deaths related to the substance have risen ten-fold since 2011.  

In one successful interception, the Irish authorities raided a shipment of more than 2.2 tonnes of cocaine destined for the UK and Europe onboard the MV Matthew cargo ship.  

A fisherman from Ukraine and an unemployed man from Teesside had been sailing to the middle of the Irish Sea to collect the illicit cargo worth €157 million (£135 million).

The modus operandi was in common with the traffickers’ use of ‘mother’ vessels unloading bales of cocaine to ‘daughter’ vessels which then make the journey ashore.  

Charlie Eastaugh, UK Border Force maritime director, told Panorama: ‘We’ve intercepted tonnes of cocaine in the last six months alone, multiple one, two tonne seizures through this method at sea.’ 

In the case of the MV Matthew, the Irish authorities secured convictions against eight men who were jailed for a total of 129 years.

All the cocaine was destroyed.

The ship is thought to have been bought by a group of cartels, believed by law enforcement to have been led by the Kinahan organised crime group, for around £10million before making the journey in September 2023.

The crew on the daughter vessel received messages from Dubai as the two vessels attempted, but failed, to rendezvous in the Irish Sea during storms, with the smaller boat ran aground.  

As the smuggling run unravelled, a boss in Dubai, calling himself Captain Noah, told the crew in a radio message: ‘My stress level is near to heart attack. Try to be calm, be calm. Full speed go.’ 

The Irish Navy fired warning shots — the first time since the 1980s — as the mother ship tried to flee, and the Army Rangers Wing used a helicopter to board the vessel off the Co. Cork coast.

The raid remains Ireland’s largest ever drug seizure.

The Irish Defence Forces are supposed to use helicopters to help protect the coastline but sometimes do not have any available, according to the Panorama investigation.  

Cathal Berry, an ex-Irish Army commandant, said: ‘The narcotic superhighway comes right across the Atlantic and one of the first countries it reaches is Ireland. Our territorial waters are a free-for-all really, it’s like the Wild West out there.’  

Eugene Ryan, former commander of fleet operations in the Irish Navy, said: ‘If I was in narco now I’d be rubbing my hands together. 

‘If they send 20 tonnes of cocaine on a number of vessels and some get caught, they’ll still get 12-15 tonnes in.’ 

The Irish government maintains that it has a ‘continuous presence and vigilance’ within its maritime domain.

Defence funding will increase by €600m (£520m) – a 55% increase over four years – and ‘significant initiatives… have also resulted in the stabilisation of Naval Service strength’, according to Dublin.  

The UK maintains that the MAOC comments about a lack of vessels refer to the initiative region as a whole, with the British Border Force seizing the largest amount of cocaine on record last year.

An Garda Síochána, Ireland’s national police and security service, referred to the country’s Joint Task Force on Drug Interdiction, which comprises the Garda as well as the Revenue Customs and Naval services.

‘It has proven to be a very successful model for disrupting the smuggling of drugs on the high seas into Ireland and has resulted in a number of significant and high profile drugs seizures,’ the Garda said.

The Garda also referred to a ‘significant network’ of its officers worldwide, including in Europe and North and South America.

The service said: ‘International drug cartels are constantly looking for any avenue through which to traffic drugs, and it is clear from the MAOC website that law enforcement interdictions occur on a weekly basis along the entirety of the European Atlantic coastline, into North Africa and also on the Americas side of the Atlantic, not just on the Irish coastline.’

The Garda also highlighted a ‘long list of significant drugs interdictions’ by the task force or individual agencies in recent years.

The service’s Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau seized illicit substances worth more than €82million (£72.1million) and €1.25 million (£1million) in cash between January and June 2025.

See the documentary here: Fighting the Cocaine Cartels – Panorama 

Do you have a story you would like to share? Contact josh.layton@metro.co.uk

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