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Irish Gardai arrested suspected members of a Sinaloa Cartel cell operating in Ireland following a nearly €33 million crystal meth seizure last week. It is suspected the drugs were ultimately destined for Australia where it could go for three times higher than the street value in Ireland.
The Irish-Mexican man has progressed up the ranks of the Sinaloa cartel in recent years, as other senior figures were jailed or ill. He is now regarded as a person of significant power and influence in the group according to Irish Gardaí.
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Australia Bound Meth Bust
“Gardai along with Revenue Officers seized 546kg of a synthetic drug, with an estimated value of €32.8 million. The value of the drug seizure is based on the street value in Ireland. The massive drug bust took place at Cork Port after the narcotics were found inside a shipping container.
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| Nathan McDonnell appearing in court (left) and James Leen covered his face entering the courtroom. |
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| One of the Ballyseedy Garden Centre locations where the hidden meth was stored for transportation to Australia. |
CCTV footage allegedly shows McDonnell loading the machine loaded with the half-ton of meth in a container for transport. Authorities said it has phone data allegedly containing details of the arrival of this machine to an ‘innocent person’ in Australia.
Sgt. Griffin said the State believes that McDonnell received and stored the machine in Ballyseedy and that he was to be paid €150,000 for storing the machine. The court was told that he is a director of 11 companies with funds of €4.4million. He had relinquished control of these businesses, which would be liquidated, therefore reducing his ties to Kerry.
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| James Leen |
James Leen is additionally charged with the importation of the meth in October 2023. Gardaí said they believed the purpose-built electromagnetic separator machine had been brought into Ireland from Mexico then. Leen is suspected of directing this illegal operation and it was their belief that Leen was a ‘serious logistics figure’ for an organized crime group.
James is the son of politician Billy Leen, a former Sinn Fein Councillor. The Sinn Fein party was a precursor to the IRA and similar groups. James had beaten up a farmer in 2002, kicking the man in his head. He received several years in prison after he violated his parole when he and his sister brutally assaulted a woman and kicked her in the head over remarks she made in a pub to the effect that his father was a pervert and a child molester. He later threatened a witness to that attack. He has also been in court for cocaine use.
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| Morris O’Shea-Salazer, known as “Mexican Morris” |
He has previously been named alongside Morris O’Shea Salazar in Spanish documents as being part of the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. With whom they conspired to smuggle up to 6 tons (€480 million) of cocaine into Europe in just one year. Morris and Leen had been under heavy surveillance back in 2020 in Spain.
Morris is supposedly the godfather to two of Leen’s kids.
Gardaí said James Leen had spent a considerable time in Colombia recently (though it was not stamped on his passport), the United Arab Emirates, and Romania.
Much of the communications to coordinate these shipments, money transfer meetings, and logistics are now available due to the 2020 EncroChat interceptions by authorities. Leen went by ‘Cu Chulainn’, while O’Shea Salazar went by ‘Sin City Gold’. ‘Cu Chulainn’ was also seen to have been selling grenades and guns via EncroChat. Two firearms were recovered during Garda raids following the seizure.
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| A truck is viewed with large pallets with loads of cocaine. |
EncroChat Communications
UK, French, and Dutch police had broken into EncroChat’s service in 2020, putting a piece of malware onto servers that would allow authorities to stop the panic wipe feature of the phones. And allow them to access messages, and record lock screen PINs.
By April 2020, European agencies had access to millions of text and hundreds of thousands of images. Under the codenames Operation Venetic (NCA) and Eternal (Metropolitan police), agencies began to analyze data and alert local law enforcement agencies across the globe.
Almost immediately, the Guardia Civil applied to bug and film the implicated Irish men residing in Barcelona. Requests were put into airlines for the flight details of Morris O’Shea Salazar and his glamorous girlfriend, Yuliana Brand Gomez, as they moved between Mexico and Europe.
Officers spent days taking surveillance photos and videos of O’Shea Salazar and his crew. They were seen hosting meetings in cafés on Rambla Guimera in Barcelona’s Alella district. They had arrived in a high-end, luxury BMW.
One lower-level gang member was detained after moving 30 kilos of marijuana on his person while under police surveillance. The hack of their encrypted devices also leads to a treasure trove of photographs on the crew’s personal devices.
Each member had their own unique Encrochat identity, including the three Irish truck drivers, who went by the names “BB” “Owlbetty” and “Ironic Sugar.”
O’Shea called himself “Sin City Gold.” The businessman went by “Rough Diamond” while his right-hand man from Kerry used “Cu Chulainn.”
Other gang members include “Dior 6”, “Purelove”, “Notorious cleaner” and “Milito”. These gang members were based in places such as Pier 188 in Antwerp, Liverpool, and Valencia, where a new port terminal had been opened. In the intercepted messages, the Irish Sinaloa crew said they “owned” this new facility at Valencia.
For example, the company Nestlé was unknowingly used “to introduce cocaine from the Port of Santos to Valencia, as containers of this company have not been searched for 20 years and are never reviewed because it is a green channel.”
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| Trafficking routes of the Irish-Sinaloans. |
“Meet you at the workshop near the hotel. Sant Celoni next to the Aldi on Tuesday, April 28,” EncroChat user ‘Ironic Sugar’ tells O’Shea.
On May 20, 2020, two Irish-Sinaloan cartel members met in the Roca del Valles industrial estate in Barcelona, according to police intelligence files.
An Irish truck driver using the EncroChat handle ‘Ironic Sugar’ handed over €590,000 to the Encrochat user known as ‘breakborder’ in, what appears to be, one large parcel. The Spanish police files state: “It would be the driver who is in charge of transporting drugs owned by Morris O’Shea to Ireland, England, and Italy, camouflaged among the legal cargo of various trailers.”
These men were trusted to transport the cash back to O’Shea Salazar in payment for the cocaine shipments to Ireland and the user told him that the deposit of the new shipment would cost €22,000.
“In the next load, he says they will make €500k, ‘300 for your man in the UK and 200 for yours’. He tells him that from then on they will always make 500k.”
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| The intelligence files show images of €50 cash blocks stacked up in cardboard boxes. |
O’Shea immediately sends the images to his uncle Ricardo Salazar, who at this time is based in Chile. “I already have Chapito’s money,” he wrote.
This text provided Spanish investigators with confirmation, which could be used as evidence in a court case, that Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, O’Shea’s second cousin, was at the apex of what they were uncovering.
“Simon is there with you,” Ricardo tells his nephew. “Do the logistics and give the price where they want it and so on,” he says. “Who is going to import it here, if you or your friend you are talking to have it or we look for who will import it or how they want to invoice.”
Salazar receives numerous messages for refueling payments from drivers at a variety of truck stops, including one outside Valencia.
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“At the same time, it is observed how the majority of the members of this organization employ third parties to carry out a series of transactions, obtaining plane tickets, etc, to avoid being detected.
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Another example is a record of a conversation between O’Shea Salazar and the Irish man who was just arrested over the €33m seizure of crystal meth at Cork Port.
According to police, they discussed on April 16, 17, and 18, 2020 how to “specify the data necessary for loading a truck with drugs in Malaga, even talking about the disposition of the drugs in the pallets that the truck transports.
Salazar says: “I have the oranges in Cordoba, this one is for Alicante.”
The reply comes back: “Tennis transport brother for this week.”
Salazar then says: “I’m already working on it but the one from Benacassim can’t leave until after the quarantine.”
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“Mexican Morris”
One of the Irish men arrested during the large meth bust in Spain is believed to be a key associate of dual Irish-Mexican citizen Morris O’Shea Salazar, 33, who is accused of being a leading member of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel for Europe.
A court in Chile accepted the request of the Prosecutor’s Office to extradite O’Shea Salazar who is described as an “important member of the Sinaloa cartel.” The Tarapacá Prosecutor’s Office requested that an extradition request be filed against him, and it was “formalized in absentia” for the crimes of illicit drug trafficking and illicit association.
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Undercover Operation in Chile
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According to the investigations, Ricardo entered the country in 2020 and moved through Iquique and Santiago. For more than 12 months, he used false identities but managed to be captured in hundreds of images, videos, and wiretaps since February 2020. He had a surgical problem that led him to undergo surgery at a private center known as Clínica Santa María. Faced with this difficulty, Yolanda arrived in December of the same year and was partially in charge of the operation.
In March 2021, Ricardo and Yolanda Salazar Tarriba were arrested and charged as they attempted to flee. However, prosecutors claim it was not possible to detain Morris O’Shea, despite “coordination” between the Chilean Prosecutor’s Office and the Spanish Civil Guard.
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