Conroy says trail is pointing to bank accounts

Press conference: The Garda Commissioner, Mr Noel Conroy, has said that his officers are facing a long and painstaking investigation which will take thousands of man-hours and will likely bring them to other jurisdictions as they try to unravel the complex web behind the almost €4 million in sterling and euro which has been uncovered in the Republic since last Wednesday evening.

As raids on the offices of accountants and solicitors continued yesterday in Cork, Offaly, Louth and Dublin, Mr Conroy said that the paper trail surrounding the Provisional IRA money-laundering operation was leading investigators to bank accounts in the Republic.

However, he indicated that an unknown amount of money may already have been laundered through Irish banks and said that other funds could have been moved offshore and might also have been unwittingly given to members of the public to hold.

The fact that a member of the public had walked into Cork's Anglesea Garda station on Thursday night and handed over £175,000 led gardaí to believe that large sums had been passed to unsuspecting members of the public. Some of this money might have been passed in "dubious" circumstances.

"We believe people may have received, unwittingly, money that perhaps is sterling, and they should be mindful we are investigating large sums of sterling, and therefore I am appealing to those people to come forward before we actually knock on their door and carry out searches," he said.

Gardaí were now engaged in a "huge operation" involving "vast amounts of [ bank] notes". Hundreds of gardaí, working from local units in Dublin, Cork, Offaly and Louth and from the Criminal Assets Bureau and the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation, had amassed "huge amounts of documents" and computer hard-drives during the searches.

The investigation was still at a very early stage, Mr Conroy said. However, he added: "Naturally enough, we see subversive involvement in the movement of this money."

He could not rule out the possibility that some of the money might already have been laundered through banks in the Republic. "That being the case, you can be assured we will follow the trail right through from the very moment the money went in the door of a bank until we find out where it actually ended up."

It was "way too early" to say at this stage how much money might have been put through the Irish banking system.

When asked if gardaí had been investigating the Provisional IRA money-laundering operation before the robbery of the Northern Bank in Belfast in December, he said: "You can take it that the intelligence service, crime and security branch, are always scanning the airwaves in relation to intelligence, and you can take it that people who are now part of the investigation here would have been in their sights before."

He rejected the suggestion that gardaí might be damning Sinn Féin if the arrested people connected to the party were not charged with any offence.

"It's not my job to damn anybody. It's my job, and our officers' jobs, to investigate criminality, and all we are doing is investigating criminal offences, and whether a person is charged or not, that isn't a matter of concern to me right now. But our investigators are there, they are there to obtain the best evidence possible, and we would put that before the DPP. And we are very hopeful."

The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr McDowell, yesterday visited Garda Headquarters in the Phoenix Park and was briefed by Mr Conroy and other senior officers. Present at the meeting were Deputy Commissioner Fachtna Murphy and Assistant Commissioner Joe Egan, who is head of Crime and Security.

Mr McDowell congratulated Mr Conroy on the Garda investigation to date and said that the force had done a great service to the people of Ireland. When asked if he felt vindicated by the events of the past three days, he replied: "What do you think? Yes."