Who are the real crime bosses?

These are good times for party politics. We started the week with Mary Harney's call for Charlie Haughey to be given a fair trial and then for him to be hanged. Fine Gael ventilated this (again) in the Dail yesterday, knowing full well that this political charade would amount to nothing in the end.

Next week is likely to be more diverting. It will bring the new Liam Lawlor crisis. This will not be because Lawlor will be found to have done anything wrong; it will be because of the mess that Fianna Fail will have got into over its inquiry into his and other councillors' affairs.

How could this not end in tears? If the Rory O'Hanlon inquiry finds that Lawlor has done something wrong, he will (or should) hang them out to dry for a process that will have been so far short of fair procedures as to be hilarious. Just like the Fine Gael inquiry that resulted in the row with Liam Cosgrave, Ann Devitt and Cathal Boland.

If the O'Hanlon inquiry finds that Lawlor did nothing wrong, then it will be even more diverting - it will be accused of a cover-up. It will also be accused of a cover-up if it decides (as it should) that this is a misconceived venture, as it cannot possibly successfully conduct a parallel inquiry with that of the Flood tribunal.

John Bruton enticed Fianna Fail on to this sucker-punch, so he should be feeling pleased, even if first he was almost punched himself.

That is what politics is about nowadays - sucker-punching and game-playing - and it matters little whether the Lawlor business comes to a head this week or next: Fianna Fail may have postponed the report on Lawlor et al, but in the end the scenario will be the same.

In the Dail, Wednesday is play-time for the political boys and girls, starting with the Order of Business and then Private Members' time. Pity that issues that matter get squeezed out.

One such issue has to do with the great populist theme of our times: crime. On Monday the Irish Independent trumpeted on its front page: "Godfathers of crime: a 13-gang syndicate". The story told how 13 gangs controlled "organised crime" in the State, according to a "major" security report prepared for a meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers.

Is there not a niggle of awareness on the part of security correspondents, gardai, Department of Justice officials and Department of Justice Ministers that such a focus is nowadays laughable? Who are the real bosses of "organised crime" here - the criminals from the working-class areas of Dublin or the bankers, accountants, business people and lawyers who have been massively engaged in wide-scale tax fraud and money-laundering for years?

How could the chaotic arrangements of working-class criminals be classified as "organised crime", as compared with the sophisticated, professional operations of the real crime bosses in the banks, stock-broking houses and accountancy offices?

We don't consider tax fraud and money-laundering to be crime if it is done by high-class professionals. Crime is the impropriety of the working classes. Working the system is the impropriety of the professional classes.

A week ago today Kevin Meehan and Thomas Meehan from Kimmage in Dublin were convicted of money-laundering and sent to jail for five years and three years respectively. They had been the target of the Criminal Assets Bureau. Money-laundering is an offence under Section 31 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1994. It states that a person shall be guilty of an offence if he/she conceals or disguises any property which represents the proceeds of criminal activity on the part of the person concerned or on the part of any other person.

Don't we know from the tribunals and otherwise that the concealment of the proceeds of corruption and/or tax fraud is part of what we are as a society and that professional "advisers" are engaged in assisting this? Don't we know that all the major financial institutions have been engaged in concealing tax fraud on a massive basis for years? This is money-laundering. But has it occurred to the Criminal Assets Bureau or the Garda or the Department of Justice or the law-and-order brigade to focus on the real "bosses" of "organised crime"?

ALL these fandangles created to deal with the scourge (or is it the menace?) of crime are there to take care of the crime of the working classes, especially with those from the working classes who have had the effrontery to get rich through working the system. Why should Kevin Meehan and Thomas Meehan be in jail and the legions of bankers, accountants and corporate chiefs who have been found to have been up to their oxters in the money-laundering wash-basins be free?

Why hasn't the Criminal Assets Bureau been around to the banks of late, inquiring about their proceeds from the DIRT crime? Should the assets from that crime not be seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau, just as the assets of small-time criminals have been?

Equally, have they been out to Quarryvale? We know there is prima facie evidence that Quarryvale came about because of crime and that prima facie the huge profits made through it represent the proceeds of crime. Why should they not be seized, pending a determination on whether they are the proceeds of crime?

Or did it occur to any of these sleuths to stroll to the Revenue Commissioners and inquire of them what they did - or did not do - about the banks' role in money-laundering?

The idea is preposterous. That is not what the Criminal Assets Bureau is about. This kind of crime is not what the EU justice ministers are about or what the criminal justice system is about. The criminal justice system is about targeting the harms of the poor, not the rich.

Would it be too much to expect that the Dail might consider whether it really intended the plethora of criminal justice legislation passed (often in haste) in the last decade to be so selectively targeted?