It is notoriously difficult to catch and convict drug dealers. The CAB, however, has been successful over the last six years in pulling them in - as well as other fraudsters - based on Revenue offences. Conor Lally reports
In a well-proportioned office at Dublin's Harcourt Square Garda base, there is a framed picture which tells a significant story. It's an aerial shot of a country estate in Pitchfordstown, near Kilcock in Co Kildare. The five-bedroom property boasts many expensive trappings. It houses a swimming pool, snooker room, sauna, floodlit tennis court and paddock. The jewel in the crown of the spectacular property is a man-made lake packed full of exotic imported fish which retail at around €1,000 a go.
The property once belonged to a man believed to be one of the biggest cocaine dealers in the world, English-born Mickey Greene.
But last year, the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) seized it and later sold it for around €1 million. A penthouse apartment in Dublin's International Financial Services Centre belonging to the Englishman was also seized by CAB and auctioned. It fetched €555,000.
The photo of the Kildare property now hangs in the office of Chief Superintendent Felix McKenna, the head of the CAB. He cringes at the suggestion that it is a "trophy" from his investigations.
"We never like to get personal about these things," he says.
But a decoration of this nature in the office of a senior garda such as McKenna would have been impossible a decade ago, unthinkable even.
Back then, and indeed throughout the 1980s, drug dealers not only amassed huge fortunes, they flaunted the trappings of their wealth in the face of the gardaí investigating them and residents in the working-class communities of Dublin which proved such an insatiable marketplace for their goods for so long.
But little more than six years into the life of CAB, that has all changed. The drugs still flow freely in Dublin and outside the capital. Heroin, cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy are more easily obtainable than before. The difference now is that the beneficiaries' fortunes are no longer safe.
The once self-styled untouchables are now having their collars felt with encouraging regularity. And it is McKenna and the other 56 staff at CAB who are leading the charge.
When McKenna talks about his work, he speaks of propagating an "ethos of attacking assets", of securing convictions and imprisonment for Revenue offences, even if drug trafficking charges cannot be proven. His is a new mindset. He knows who the enemy is and presents very much as a man who does not take No for an answer.
He says CAB is at the beginning of a new era where white-collar criminals will have much to fear.
"The whole focus pre-1996 was on arrest and prosecution," he says. "The financial information available at that time was used to support a criminal prosecution. If a dealer was convicted, the judiciary paid scant regard to the profits generated simply because the ethos was not there to attack that profit. But even now, where individuals escape prosecution, we go in and fill that vacuum, we attack the profits using our civil powers."
Under the Proceeds of Crime Act CAB was, in 1996, given unprecedented powers to investigate covertly the financial affairs of those it suspected of engaging in criminal activity before seizing their assets.
The bureau often serves tax demands against those who, while not convicted of any crime, find themselves unable to explain where they got their money.
As well as drug dealers, it has also targeted brothel keepers, fraudsters and bank robbers. It carried out most of the work leading to the seizure of laundered money belonging to a host of criminals, including John Gilligan, Gerry Hutch and Brian Meehan, the man convicted of murdering Veronica Guerin.
The introduction of the euro has meant it is now easier for criminals to transport their money abroad.
"They don't have to go to a bank to change their money," says McKenna. "It means they can bring it out of the jurisdiction in hold-all bags, particularly into countries where they buy their drugs. But the bureau has adapted to their tactics, and we liaise with the authorities in other countries to track the movement of large amounts of money."
But away from the world of drugs, the CAB has been busy on other fronts of late.
So far this year, it has seized a €4 million block of apartments and retail outlets in Dublin's Smithfield area from two businessmen. The asset will be sold to satisfy a Revenue demand.
Just over a week ago, the former director of operations of the "Real IRA", Liam Campbell, was ordered to pay an €820,000 tax bill by CAB. And recently it also secured a €1.2 million judgment against former Longford car dealer and convicted insurance fraudster, Michael Byrne.
Last October, following a direction from the Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne, McKenna set up a new team within CAB to examine allegations of corruption which date back to 1974. Some of the allegations involve controversial land deals. McKenna refuses to name names, but it is known the former Minister Ray Burke forms part of that investigation. CAB officers have interviewed a number of people in recent months in connection with the investigation. McKenna points out that, because many of CAB's powers are based on civil law, any charges of corruption will not have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. Instead, the balance of probabilities will suffice, he says.
"In the immediate future, I see that forming a major part of the work that we do," he says of the corruption investigation.
Another major area CAB is investigating is carousel VAT fraud. This involves goods being sold several times between Irish and UK-based firms and VAT being claimed back every time the goods are sold from the UK market into this country. Last year, CAB froze €22 million in assets belonging to 29-year-old Irish man Dylan Creaven, who currently faces charges in the UK relating to the fraud.
"The money being generated is colossal. It far exceeds what any drug dealer is earning. And even some fraudsters wouldn't be fit to generate this kind of money."
It has also been active on the international fraud front. Following a tip-off last year from US authorities that US and UK-based fraudsters had used two Irish financial institutions to invest €7 million, CAB froze the bulk of the funds within 24 hours.
"I got a call one morning at 10 a.m., and by 5 p.m. I was in the High Court giving evidence [looking for an order to freeze the money]. The Americans couldn't believe we could move so fast. In a case like this, the money defrauded can very often have question marks hanging over it, it could be Colombian cartel money, it could be anything.
"Not one of the companies whose name the money was in has come to us to claim it, so it's still frozen, and that stays in force for seven years. Anyone who comes in saying they are a victim must come in here and show us the bona fides of their money. Then we might listen to them."