Cab recovered €16m from criminals last year

The Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) collected over €16 million in taxes and interest from criminals last year, according to its annual report for 2005 released yesterday.

The report also shows that the Cab secured temporary or final High Court orders freezing assets worth €7.3 million.

It says that five houses and seven cars were sold, generating around €2 million for the Exchequer. Cab operations generated savings on social welfare payments of over €216,000 last year. Minister for Justice Michael McDowell yesterday commended the Cab on its achievements last year and said it was "an integral element in the armoury of the State to ensure crime doesn't pay".

The Minister said that since its statutory inception in October 1996 and up to December 31st, 2005, the Cab had obtained interim and final restraint orders, freezing assets shown to be the proceeds of crime, amounting to €58 million and €25 million respectively. "In the same period, taxes and interest demanded was almost €87 million, with almost €89 million collected. Regarding social welfare payments, savings amount to almost €2 million and recovery of overpayments amounted to over €1 million," Mr McDowell stated.

The Minister also praised the Cab for forging links with similar agencies abroad "to help ensure that proceeds of crime will be tracked down, regardless of location".

The head of the Cab, Det Chief Supt Felix McKenna, said in the report that the bureau had forwarded more than €18.5 million to the Exchequer last year. He said that for operational effectiveness and reasons of statutory confidentiality the Cab could not provide specific details on many of its actions.

Over €5.2 million was spent on running the Cab last year. Nearly €4 million of this went on pay.

According to the report five gardaí were provided to the Cab on a temporary basis last year to assist in investigations arising from the Northern Bank robbery.

The report says that under legislation a receiver may be appointed to preserve or dispose of property frozen by order of the courts. It says that last year the Cab obtained 13 such orders.

The report maintains that in two cases the High Court ordered the receiver to make payments of £926,204 (€1,370,415) and $754,406 (€591,397) to persons (representing victims of a fraud in the US) who claimed ownership of property frozen.

Under legislation, the Cab is also empowered to apply taxes to the profits derived from criminal conduct. The report says that the Cab officers raised tax assessments on 20 individuals and two companies as a result of investigations. Of the €16 million in taxes collected last year, €12 million related to income tax, €2.4 million to capital gains tax and €1.7 to VAT. Following investigations by the Cab into criminal activity, a number of social welfare payments were terminated. This generated savings for the State of €159,632 in one-parent family payments, €35,945 in disability allowance and €20,477 in unemployment assistance.

The Cab also identified overpayment of benefits and more than €293,000 was recovered.