By Isabel Hayes
An “informal” courier who was caught with a bag containing €140,000 in cash has been jailed for 33 months.
Andrzej Slyk (40) with an address at Wielua Skotnica, Myslowice, Poland, had been staying on a friend’s couch in Drimnagh when gardaí came in “like a tornado” and found his rucksack containing two Tesco bags full of cash, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard on Friday.
The gardaí had been searching for cannabis, but instead found the €140,000 in cash inside Slyk’s bag, Garda Simon Cadam told Diarmuid Collins BL, prosecuting.
Slyk initially told gardaí he had found the bag on the car ferry from Poland but later admitted he had been given the package by two people he met in the city centre.
Slyk pleaded guilty to possessing the proceeds of crime at an address in Dublin on August 31, 2023. It is an offence that carries a maximum sentence of 14 years. He entered the guilty plea on the basis of recklessness, Eoin Lawlor SC, defending, told the court.
Mr Lawlor submitted that Slyk did not know what was in the package and only looked inside and saw the cash shortly before gardaí arrived. Slyk worked as an “informal courier” bringing items to Ireland from his native Poland, the court heard.
Mr Lawlor said Slyk’s recklessness was on the basis of not checking what was in the package, running his courier business without doing due checks and balances and “leaving himself open to being used and abused”.
He said his client did not acquit himself well when gardaí “came in like a tornado” and “shocked” Slyk, who has no previous convictions in either jurisdiction. He was “unfortunate, reckless and cavalier about how he did his business,” counsel submitted.
Since this offence, Slyk has not been allowed to leave the country, nor operate as a courier and has been staying in a caravan and doing odd jobs, the court heard.
Sentencing Slyk, Judge Martin Nolan said there was a “high degree of recklessness” on Slyk’s part. He accepted Slyk was working legitimately but noted he was informal in how he went about this business.
He said Slyk “would have been alert to illicit material” in his possession. He set a headline sentence of six years, but reduced it to 33 months, taking mitigating factors into account.