The Irish drugs gang known as The Family had amassed considerable wealth and influence, allowing for its significant expansion, before an Irish-Spanish operation dismantled its large hub in Spain and three of its leading figures were arrested in the Republic.
The Irish operation – led by the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau – took place on Monday and was based mainly in Dublin, though other Irish targets are from the southeast of the country. Six men were arrested by the Garda in recent days, including three leaders of the gang.
As the Irish component of the investigation was unfolding, police in Spain were also moving in on the Irish gang’s distribution hub in Castellón de la Plana in Valencia. The Family also had branches in Murcia and Málaga, with drugs valued at about €30 million seized this week in Spain in various stages of being readied for smuggling to Ireland.
“This network enjoyed a high economic status, which facilitated the collaboration of other individuals and expanded its geographical sphere of influence,” Spain’s Department of Treasury, which was involved in the operation, said on Wednesday night.
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It added the group comprised about 20 people, in Ireland and Spain, and had adopted “significant security measures” to avoid detection. “The group hid the drugs in vacuum-sealed containers hidden in the false bottoms of all types of vehicles,” the department said of luxury cars and trucks with semi trailers and Irish registration plates.
The Family has become the biggest drugs gang in the Republic in recent years. Using its hub in Spain, with its own members overseeing a mainly Spanish group, the gang vacuum-packed cocaine and herbal cannabis, which were then hidden in secret compartments in cars and trucks for smuggling to Ireland.
Using information obtained when the Ghost encrypted platform was infiltrated last year, Irish and European investigators, with the support of Europol, have now traced a series of drugs runs from Spain to Ireland that the Family gang was involved in. Each run involved drugs valued at millions of Euro, mostly cocaine.
Two such consignments of cocaine, with a combined value of almost €20 million, have been found in Ireland; one last September when the Australian-run host network was taken down and another more recently. Gardaí believe those drugs consignments, and others that went undetected, had originated from the Spanish distribution operation searched this week, resulting in the seizure of drugs valued at almost €30 million.
Monday’s Garda operation in Ireland, based mainly in west Dublin, targeted leadership figures in the organisation. The men arrested were still being questioned by detectives on Wednesday night.
In an update on Wednesday, Europol described the Dublin-headquartered Family gang as “an Irish high-risk criminal network”. The European agency also confirmed the operations in Ireland and Spain this week resulted directly from the infiltration of the Ghost network, a supposedly secure messaging service run from Sydney for organised crime gangs.
“The criminals are suspected of involvement in large-scale drug trafficking, mainly by transporting drugs hidden in vehicles from Spain to Ireland,” Europol said of the Family. The criminals involved are now being “haunted by their chats” on Ghost, which they used to co-ordinate their involvement in the drugs trade, “relying on both encryption and multi-platform distribution”.
“The sophistication of their communications was in stark contrast to the simplicity of their modus operandi. It consisted of smuggling cocaine and marijuana across the Continent in vehicles equipped with custom-made secret compartments and cloned number plates,” Europol said.
