About half of all suspected criminals being targeted by the Criminal Assets Bureau for investigation are in the greater Dublin area, a meeting in Cork has heard.
CAB Chief Bureau Officer, Chief Supt Patrick Clavin told a Joint Policing Committee meeting at Cork City Council the bureau is currently carrying out full investigations and preliminary investigations into more than 900 targets, about 50 per cent of whom live in or around the capital.
He said CAB is looking at 68 targets in Limerick and 43 in Louth.
Chief Supt Clavin said bureau uses 350 profilers, of whom 300 are gardaí who look at the asset profile of individuals and assess whether they are worthy of closer examination if they are suspected of acquiring those assets from crime.
Speaking at the meeting at Cork City Hall, he revealed that CAB is looking at a total of 16 targets in the Cork City Garda Division. Other suspected criminals in the Cork North and Cork West divisions are being investigated.
“Most criminality is drug-related and the next after that would be burglaries, organised prostitution, smuggling such as cigarette smuggling, fuel smuggling and all those forms of criminality would be among the 30 targets that we have here in Cork city and county,” Chief Supt Clavin said .
He said while Limerick city and Cork city were busier in the past, the current focus is primarily on Dublin due to gangland feuds.
Chief Supt Clavin said one of the recent developments which had greatly assisted the bureau’s work was a change in legislation in 2016 which reduced the threshold at which gardaí could seek to confiscate a suspected criminal asset from €13,000 to €5,000.
Proceeds of crime
"If you had somebody with a car worth €10,000 which looks well in the community but which we believe is the proceeds of crime - up until two years ago, we would not have been able to seize that. But now we can seize it for 21 days before we have to go and seek an order from the High Court.
“But we would never use this without doing our homework first because 21 days is very short time to complete an investigation but we would use it where we are 90 per cent of the way there with our investigation,” he said.
He assured councillors that anyone who contacts CAB with information will be dealt with in confidence and they will never be asked to testify in court. He said CAB investigators will gather their own evidence to support any court application regarding a target.
He said criminals will often use cars or expensive watches as currency to pay off debts or transfer monies but they had noticed a number of recent developments including the use of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Among the more unusual proceeds of crime which CAB have seized are a racehorse and cattle, the meeting heard.
He said the bureau, which was set up 20 years ago, is seen as a model of asset seizure by many countries who send officials to Ireland to see how it works.
