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Reporter competition thirty-two entrant

Kiumaars Ghabiri: 11 years for the €59m West Cork cocaine conspiracy

An international cell brought a modified “stealth” speedboat, satellite phones and maritime equipment to a quiet Irish coastline. Kiumaars Ghabiri provided logistical support on land. A local tip-off, a Garda checkpoint and a failed rendezvous at sea helped bring the plan apart.

Published 31 July 2026 · Remigration Ireland case ledger
11 yearsSentence imposed
€58–59mReported cocaine value
840–850kgReported load estimate
985kmRHIB journey recorded

Kiumaars Ghabiri was one of seven men who admitted taking part in a conspiracy to import controlled drugs into Ireland between 27 February and 14 March 2024. The Special Criminal Court imposed an 11-year sentence on 11 December 2025.

Reports describe his background in slightly different but compatible terms. RTÉ's sentencing report calls him an Iranian national resident in the Netherlands. Earlier Irish Times reporting described him as an Iranian-born Dutch citizen with a Rotterdam address, while later court coverage called him a Dutch national born in Tehran. Those are the limits of the public record used here. The reporting does not establish that Ghabiri ever held Irish residence, asylum or immigration status, and this file makes no such claim.

A checkpoint opens the investigation

The conspiracy did not unravel because a large cocaine shipment was found in West Cork. It began to come apart at a Garda checkpoint near Bandon on 27 February 2024.

Inspector Joseph Young told the Special Criminal Court that Gardaí stopped a car containing an Irish national and a foreign national. Officers considered one of the men nervous and evasive. A search uncovered a notebook listing six local Airbnb properties and coordinates for Roscarbery and Dromadoon piers. Gardaí then mounted a surveillance operation across the south coast.

The equipment assembled by the group pointed to a planned offshore collection: a rigid-hulled inflatable boat, vehicles, satellite and mobile phones, radios, GPS devices, control panels, wetsuits and other maritime gear. A former naval officer who examined the boat said its parts had been painted black and that it lacked normal visibility and safety equipment. It carried three 300-horsepower engines and substantial fuel. The prosecution case was that the vessel was configured to detect without being detected.

The failed rendezvous

The boat left Tragumna Pier at about 5am on 12 March. GPS evidence showed a journey of approximately 985 kilometres over almost 48 hours in difficult conditions. Its crew attempted to intercept the Panama-flagged cargo ship Cool Explorer near the south of Britain, but the rendezvous failed and the boat returned empty.

The ship later passed the Danish coast. Between 840 and 850 kilograms of cocaine, valued in court reports at between €58 million and €59 million, subsequently washed ashore near Sjællands Odde. The Irish Examiner reported that GPS units attached to the drug bales matched coordinates used in the operation.

On 14 March, following a tip-off about activity at Tragumna Pier, Gardaí intercepted the group's truck, SUV and boat there and stopped a camper van at nearby Leap. Ten men were arrested.

Ghabiri's role

Evidence at the sentencing hearing described a cell structure involving Irish, Spanish and Dutch-Iranian groupings. Ghabiri was placed in the Dutch-Iranian cell and was said to have provided logistical support. He remained on land during the attempted collection; he was not identified as a member of the RHIB crew.

His defence said he was not at the upper levels of the conspiracy and did not stand to make a large profit. It also said his guilty plea came very early. Those were mitigation submissions, not a denial of the conspiracy to which he had pleaded guilty.

The public sentencing report says Ghabiri had previous drug offences. It does not state their number, dates, jurisdictions, sentences or precise legal descriptions. This file therefore records only the existence of reported previous drug offending and does not manufacture a fuller criminal history than the published evidence supports.

Conviction and sentence

Ghabiri pleaded guilty at the non-jury Special Criminal Court to conspiring with others to do an act in the State constituting a serious offence: importing controlled drugs worth more than €13,000 during the period from 27 February to 14 March 2024. Court reports identify the conspiracy provision as section 71 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006, with the intended drugs offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 as amended.

The three-judge court selected an 18-year headline sentence for each conspirator. It reduced that by one-third for the guilty pleas, bringing Ghabiri's sentence to 12 years, and applied further individual mitigation to impose 11 years.

Ms Justice Karen O'Connor said the men had carried out extensive planning, logistics and reconnaissance to exploit Ireland's coastline. She described the conspiracy as audacious and brazen and said the group's lack of respect for people in the jurisdiction was astounding. Seven men received terms totalling 70 years.

A targeted check of published reporting through 31 July 2026 located no appeal by Ghabiri against his conviction or sentence. That is a reporting check, not a claim that every possible appeal right has expired.

What the public record does and does not show

The plot failed to land cocaine in Ireland, so the reported €58–59 million figure is the estimated value of the cocaine the group intended to collect, not the value of drugs seized from Ghabiri personally. The conspiracy conviction does not require the court to pretend the failed rendezvous succeeded.

The reporting also contains occasional age and spelling inconsistencies across the ten accused. This file uses the spelling Kiumaars Ghabiri found consistently in the guilty-plea and sentencing reports. It does not conflate him with co-accused Ali Ghasemi Mazidi, whose case remained pending in the later sources.

Chronology

Public-cost benchmark

A parliamentary answer puts the 2024 average annual cost of an available, staffed prison space at €99,072. Applying that average mechanically across the full 11-year sentence produces a face-value benchmark of approximately €1,089,792.

This is not an invoice and not a prediction of time actually served. It does not account for remission, release decisions, changes in annual prison costs or time already spent on remand. It excludes Garda surveillance, the 4,500-page prosecution file reported by the Southern Star, court, prosecution, legal-aid and international-investigation costs. The calculation is published only as a transparent system-wide benchmark.

Sources

Record checked: 31 July 2026. This file distinguishes established convictions and sentence from prosecution evidence, defence mitigation and reporting gaps.