The Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) took almost €19 million from criminals last year and froze assets and cash worth almost €6 million, according to its annual report for 2004.
The bureau also assessed criminals for €5.5 million in unpaid taxes, demanded a further €5.5 million in unpaid taxes and penalties and secured tax judgments in the High Court to the value of €5.1 million.
Last year's Cab actions bring to €140 million the value of cash and other assets that Cab has frozen or secured for the State coffers since its inception in 1996.
It has stepped up its work in the regions by training an "assets profiler" in every Garda division. These will now work on Cab's behalf across the country, suggesting possible targets.
Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said Cab's annual report highlighted the bureau's continued success.
For the first time last year, the bureau returned money to the victims of criminals targeted by it. A total of €5.5 million was paid last year to the victims of an international high-yield investment scam. Recipients of the money were victims of US fraudster Terry Dowdel. In 2002 the bureau was granted an interim order by the High Court in respect of €6.5 million held in Irish banks by Dowdel.
He was later imprisoned for having defrauded his victims of large sums on the pretence he was to invest the money on their behalf.
Cab was last year forced to return sums to foreign criminals who identified a flaw in the Proceeds of Crime Act and appealed Cab judgments against them.
In May last year the Supreme Court ruled Cab had no powers to confiscate the assets in Ireland of foreign criminals who had amassed these assets through criminal activity abroad.
The case involved a house in Co Wicklow bought in the late 1980s for cash by a British national in his 60s. The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had convictions for drug dealing and firearms offences in Britain.
He successfully appealed Cab's confiscation of his Wicklow house. A number of other British criminals who had been targeted by Cab also took appeals. Some of these were successful and in at least one case Cab reached a settlement.
The cases forced the return by Cab last year of €800,000. The loophole has since been closed.
Two of Cab's first cases resulted in payments of €275,000 last year after the expiry of time limits for a possible appeal.
These were against Dublin criminal Brian Meehan, a member of John Gilligan's drugs gang, and Tommy Mullen, a Dublin drug dealer serving a prison sentence in Britain.
A number of other early CAB cases in which the appeal time limit has expired have resulted in payments of €1.5 million to Cab so far this year.
According to the 2004 annual report, interim orders against 11 defendants were secured to the value of just over €1 million, down from €3 million in 2003.
These High Court orders mean cash and assets have been frozen by the courts. Cab must prepare books of evidence against suspects to return to court to seek interlocutory, or final, orders.
Interlocutory orders to the value of €1.7 million, compared with €150,000 in 2003, were granted by the High Court in 2004 in respect of six defendants.
Interlocutory orders allow Cab to take possession of cash or assets it had previously frozen.
The bureau collected a record €16.5 million in taxes and interest, up from €10 million in 2003. It assessed individuals involved in crime for €5.52 million in unpaid taxes, down from €7.4 million in 2003. And it demanded €5.49 million in taxes and interest from other criminal figures, down from €7.2 million.
In the area of social welfare payments, the bureau secured savings or reimbursements of over €800,000.
