Alleged drugs dealer Colin Armstrong, who had assets valued at about £5 million frozen by the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA), was a former police officer who was forced to leave the RUC.
Mr Armstrong, from Glenavy, Co Antrim, who was allegedly linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force and later the Loyalist Volunteer Force, has proved the biggest target of the two-year-old ARA. It is Northern Ireland's equivalent of the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) in the Republic
Mr Armstrong (38) owns nearly 50 properties, most of them in the North. He also has a flat in the Republic and an apartment on the Cote d'Azur in France. He has two companies and several bank accounts.
All of these were frozen following High Court action by the agency in an investigation which also involved the Cab in the Republic.
The PSNI confirmed yesterday that Mr Armstrong once served as a full-time reservist with the RUC. He was "required to resign as a consequence of neglect of duty" in 1991, the PSNI said yesterday.
Police did not say what the neglect of duty charge referred to, but said it was not "in respect of criminal activity".
Mr Armstrong was investigated several times by police but was never charged. The ARA was able to take action because it works on the basis of civil proof rather than the more demanding criminal proof.
DUP MP for North Belfast Nigel Dodds welcomed the freezing of assets, but said overall the agency was only dealing with "loose change". He said there must be a greater effort to seize more money and assets.
Mr Dodds said there was an imbalance between those targeted because "four times as much" was "recovered from loyalists as from republicans".
"A job of work needs to be done to ensure that the vast amount of money that is sloshing about out there in terms of republican activity, as well as loyalist activity, is also targeted."
