A man who smuggled over €80,000 worth of tobacco into Ireland has been jailed for three months at Cloverhill District Court.
The man, a Romanian national who does not live in Ireland, appeared before Judge Alan Mitchell this morning where he was aided by a Romanian interpreter.
The court heard that Alin Mocanu Dragos (34), who has an address in Spain, was stopped at the blue channel at Terminal 2 of Dublin Airport on the 31st of July last by customs officials who found 25kgs of tobacco in his luggage, on which no duty had been paid.
Dragos had come to Dublin on a flight from Barcelona, where he purchased the tobacco which did not bear Irish stamps.
Judge Mitchell commented that a flight path from Romania, to Barcelona, to Dublin was “unusual”, musing on whether there were direct flights from Romania to Dublin.
When interviewed he admitted that that he had himself purchased the material, with the court hearing evidence that the loss to the exchequer would have been over €9,700 should it have reached the market in Ireland.
It was made clear to the accused that if he served a prison sentence he would not be liable for a fine.
Dragos’ defending counsel argued that his client had been cooperative with authorities once the contents of his luggage had come to light, however Judge Mitchell said that Dragos had been “caught red handed” and had not approached customs officials to confess his crime.
His defending counsel accepted this, saying that his client, “didn’t try to spin a story”, saying that he “didn’t understand the seriousness” of the charge until he ended up before the courts.
Taking into consideration the guilty plea as mitigation, Judge Mitchell said that the court wished to send a “strong message” as a “deterrent”.
He sentenced Dragos to three months in jail to be backdated to the 31st of July to give credit for time already spent in custody.
A destruction order was granted in respect of the tobacco.