acquitted | 

Girlfriend of veteran gangster John

Gilligan cleared of drug charges

The veteran crime boss went back to a Spanish court to support partner Sharon Oliver

Yesterday at 16:01

John Gilligan’s girlfriend has been cleared of the drug charges she was tried on last week a day after the Irish gangster escaped jail thanks to a plea bargain deal.

The veteran crime boss went back to a Spanish court to support partner Sharon Oliver 24 hours after he was handed a suspended 22-month prison sentence.

Gilligan (71) confessed to being the owner of a pistol found buried in the back garden of his former Costa Blanca home and admitted running a Spain-to-Ireland cannabis and sleeping pill smuggling ring after opting against running the risk of going to trial and getting a lengthy prison sentence if convicted.

But Sharon (61) refused to sign the deal he and seven other accomplices including his son Darren accepted last Monday and told Torrevieja-based Orihuela Criminal Court Number Two: “I did nothing wrong.”

Today judge Francisco Ruiz-Jarabo acquitted her of the two crimes she was tried on.

He concluded in an 11-page written ruling: “It has not been proven Sharon intervened in the illicit operations carried out by the others.”

He said a conversation intercepted by police before their arrests in which Gilligan told his girlfriend the 20,000 tablets they had at home were enough for “three or four deliveries” did not make her criminally responsible.

The judge ruled the 1,000-plus powerful sleeping pills dubbed Zimmos – used by heroin addicts to numb pain – found in her bag when police raided the couple’s former home in October 2020 were “obviously not only for her own consumption” despite her medical ailments which include bowel problems and a hernia.

But he implied he was acquitting the London-born Brit partly because of a legal technicality by pointing out one of the crimes she was charged with was that of exporting and supplying medicines without licence to do so under article 361 of the Spanish penal code.

“Article 368 of the Spanish penal code punishes mere possession over and above an amount considered valid for self-consumption.

“But article 361 doesn’t contemplate the concept of mere possession because its precept is the sanctioning of those who make, import, export and market them or store them with that aim.

“Equating the carrying of a high number of pills with ‘storage’ implies an extensive interpretation of the penal precept that is obviously not admissible.”

He added: “Nothing in the case files or the evidence given in court by police includes any information that could link the accused to the other crimes, such as cannabis trafficking or the unlawful possession of weapons.

“In short no witness or objective evidence can corroborate in a comprehensive way the existence of Sharon’s active participation in the facts that have been proven against the others.”

Sharon is thought to have been given the good news about her acquittal in hospital in the UK, where she is due to undergo a hernia operation in a few days.

Gilligan, who has made a series of extraordinary confessions about his life of crime in a three-part TV series which began on Virgin Media on September 4, is believed to be with her in Britain.

Prosecutors were demanding a six-year prison sentence for the gangster’s girlfriend if found guilty of a crime of trafficking with cannabis and another of supplying and exporting medicines without permission.

She denied any knowledge of the courier service smuggling operation her partner confessed to masterminding a day before her one-day trial began last Tuesday, even though police told how 10,000 of the ‘Zimmos’ were found in “plain sight” on a bed in the couple’s villa along with around two kilos of cannabis worth EUROS 3,500.

The consignments of pills and drugs were sent in boxes containing children’s toys and flip-flops.

Gilligan, who says he is planning to quit Spain, has been ordered to pay fines of just over €14,000 on top of his 22-month suspended prison sentence – nine months for the cannabis trafficking charge, nine months for illegal possession of a firearm and four months for exporting prescription-only drugs without licence.

Prosecutors had said they wanted him jailed for more than eight years if convicted of four charges he was originally due to be tried on.

The gun found in his back garden was initially linked to Irish journalist Veronica Guerin’s 1996 murder, but ballistic tests carried out confirmed that it was not the one used.

Gilligan was acquitted of ordering the reporter’s murder in 2001 after a trial in Dublin, but sentenced to 28 years in prison which was reduced on appeal after being convicted of importing two tons of cannabis.

The seven other men accused alongside him on the drugs and medicine supply and export charge at the court in Torrevieja, who included his son Darren, 47, and 51-year-old playboy pal ‘Fat’ Tony Armstrong, were given suspended 18-month prison sentences.