Posted on 02/03/2006 12:44:08 PM PST by Irish_Thatcherite
IRA in link to £70m property empire Garda specialist units seize documents in series of raids
By Tom Brady
01 February 2006 An IRA link to a massive £70m-plus property empire in the Republic is being investigated by several Garda specialist units.
A series of raids on businesses, houses and the offices of professional advisers has been carried out in four counties in the past week.
A huge dossier of documentation, seized in the searches which began a week ago and ended yesterday, will now be analysed to establish if any of the businesses were used to launder IRA monies.
The investigation was ordered by Garda chiefs as a result of last year's Operation Phoenix into a Provisional IRA money laundering operation which included the proceeds of the £26m robbery from the Northern Bank in Belfast.
The inquiries are based on suspicions held by the Criminal Assets Bureau that the empire was initially financed from the proceeds of crime.
Detectives have also been trawling through files on previous Garda inquiries involving the anti-racketeering unit, over the past two decades.
The investigation is being led by the Garda's national support units and, apart from the CAB, includes the Fraud Bureau, the Republic's National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the Special Branch.
The searches have been carried out in counties Dublin, Meath, Wicklow and Louth and a number of properties in the licensed trade are among those under investigation, including a popular hotel in the centre of Dublin, a pub on the southside and a former pub in the north of the city.
New developments including a housing and business venture in Meath are also under the spotlight as detectives try to determine if some of the money used to fund them was generated through crime.
The homes of at least three company directors and the offices of accountants and solicitors were also searched.
Members of the CAB examined several companies where the directors overlap although detectives are satisfied some of those named have no direct connections to the Provisionals.
Gardai have also been liaising closely with the PSNI and police in Britain.
The money trail is believed by gardai to have begun back in the late 1980s and 1990s when the IRA was suspected of being involved in a huge slot machine scam in London and other major cities.
Revenue officers in Britain believed that poker machines in several amusement arcades had been fixed to reduce the punters' prospects of winning.
Gardai now think some of the vast profits gleaned from "slots" scams were used to build a property empire, with the help of legitimate borrowings from financial institutions.
Most of the businesses under investigation are in the licensed trade and detectives are focusing in particular on pubs, clubs and hotels which were bought and then badly run before being handed over to other companies, building up a network in which the identities of the original players became difficult to spot.
Initial Garda inquiries failed to establish a sufficient link with the proceeds of crime to justify criminal charges. But the inquiries were given a new impetus in the past year as detectives probed deeper into the activities of the Provisional IRA money laundering operation and, in particular, the activities of its former director of finance.
A ping to more IRA treachery.
Thanks for the ping Irish - the RA are still at it as usual.
Don't tell the Boston Boobs.
Not exactly embracing peaceful and democratic means!! LOL
I wonder where is kelly, Jesop and co.? Zotted I hope!!
I was referring in general to the Boston Irish Americans who seem to be particularly nutty about the country most of them have never seen.
All holding on to some out-dated dream!!
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