DRUG BARON WHO PROJECTED IMAGE OF A FAMILY MAN

A jail sentence of 22 years, the most severe given for a drugs offence
in an Irish court, was imposed yesterday on Edward Scanlon in Cork.

Scanlon (49), a father of three, with an address at Laburnum Drive,
Model Farm, Cork, was a leading member of a major drugs gang involved
in importing and distributing cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine into
Ireland, the Cork Circuit Criminal Court heard.

To the end Scanlon appeared to maintain his composure, explaining his
wealth by presenting himself as an enterprising hard working
businessman who at turns worked at renovating buildings, running a
restaurant and developing a hydro-electric project.

Dressed in jeans, tie and casual jacket with his grey beard trimmed,
he sat in the witness box and told of being in debt to banks over
mortgages and spoke of his young children, projecting an image of a
regular family man.

But yesterday was not the first time that Scanlon had traded on his
image as a family man. Back in 1980, he enlisted the help of an
eight-year-old boy, son of his then girlfriend, to paint a similar
picture.

The boy was brought by Scanlon and his girlfriend as they drove from
Turkey to Britain with a consignment of heroin worth pounds 2.5
million. They were arrested at Harwich by British customs officials.

That run for a Turkish drug trafficker, Fuat Yuksel, earned Scanlon a
seven-year prison sentence, but he served only three years of it at
Maidstone Prison where he took courses in welding and
brick-laying.

Three years later Scanlon was back in Maidstone, this time having been
convicted of conspiring to import cocaine at Heathrow. The cocaine was
found hidden in the underwear of his female companion.

The son of a successful Cork businessman who owned a tyre company,
Scanlon was educated at Presentation Brothers Primary School and
Mungret College.

It was an opportunity noted by Judge A.G. Murphy. "He was educated by
the Presentation Brothers and the Jesuits at Mungret. He is quite
obviously an intelligent person, but that to my mind makes him even
more culpable."

After leaving school, Scanlon, known to his contemporaries in Cork as
Judd, lived for a time in New York, where he was given life probation
for possessing heroin, and later in Venezuela where gardai believe
he served time for drugs offences.

Periods of temporary employment as an antique dealer at Kensington
Market and as an amusements arcade manager followed, but when he
returned to Cork in the late 1980s he was, according to a Garda
source, "a folk hero to local small-time drug dealers".

After yesterday's sentence, Scanlon remained composed, correcting the
prosecution barrister, Mr Sean O'Donnabhain, to say that his sentence
should be backdated, not to March, but to February when he was first
taken into custody.