An entrepreneur and Trinity College graduate who organised the importation of €29-million worth of cocaine into the country will be sentenced later.

Gareth Hopkins, with addresses at Carnlough Road, Cabra and Leixlip, Co. Kildare is facing the mandatory minimum 10-year sentence for possession of the drug for sale or supply on June 26th, last year.

The court heard the cocaine was imported inside timber – Gareth Hopkins used the fake name Gary Kelly to organise the shipping of the container, in which the 423 kilos of the drug were concealed.

But garda intelligence led to the imported drugs being found in raids at Ballycoolin, West Dublin and in a shed at his home in Leixlip.

The 33-year-old is a Trinity College computer science graduate with extensive legitimate business interests, including a small diamond mining firm in Sierra Leone.

The defence says his fall from grace followed the death of his sister and his redundancy from his job as a property manager.
He’s due to be sentenced today.