A convicted Dutch drugs trafficker has succeeded in preventing the Criminal Assets Bureau from immediately selling all the lands recently seized by the bureau at Sneem, Co Kerry. Mr Jan Hendrik Ijpelaar, from Rotterdam, was granted a stay on the sale of 10 acres at Greenane, which he claimed he had bought with personal finances not tainted by drug trafficking. Mr Justice Butler granted a stay on the sale of the land at Greenane, but said the bureau could go ahead with the sale of Clashnacree House and surrounding lands.
Last month, the bureau told the High Court that the sale of Mr Ijpelaar's Kerry properties could realise about £1.5 million. The court granted an order for possession and sale, and a receiver was appointed. The court had been told Mr Ijpelaar was a trafficker in ecstasy and cannabis who had been convicted in Holland and jailed for six years in 1992.
Chief Supt Felix McKenna, head of the bureau, told the court that Mr Ijpelaar had bought the Kerry properties in 1991 for £300,000 and had gone to great lengths to conceal the purchase. It had allegedly been bought with the aid of a fake mortgage taken out through a company which had since been struck off the Companies Register. Yesterday, Mr Ijpelaar claimed he had income tax documents to show he had earned money in the early 1990s, and this was the money he had used to buy the property at Greenane.
Mr Shane Murphy, counsel for the bureau, said it was still the bureau's case that Mr Ijpelaar was the beneficial owner of all the properties in Kerry.