The Criminal Assets Bureau struck targets for more than €8 million last year, it has emerged.
Provisional figures released to the Dail by Justice Minister Heather Humphreys show that the elite unit seized assets worth almost €5.8 million – as well as collecting taxes and recovering social welfare payments worth another €2.5 million.
And the figures also show that the unit also gave back almost €2 million to the exchequer – after securing court orders to dispose of targets’ assets that had been seized as part of previous investigations into organised crime gangs.
Minister Humphries told Dublin South Central Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh that the provisional figures show the CAB froze assets worth some €5.81 million last year.
That haul included cash, cars, jewellery and other valuables as the CAB hunted down suspected proceeds of crime.
It included the seizure of 80 cars worth almost €2 million in one operation in Munster in September - as part of a probe into an international gang using a showroom in Ireland to launder their dirty money.
The vehicles seized included top of the range BMWs, Range Rovers and Volvos – but none had been stolen.
It’s also understood the crime was not active in Ireland apart from the money laundering.
Instead, gardai believe the gang defrauded businesses in the United Kingdom and then used that money to buy the cars which they sold in the Munster showroom – as a way of laundering their dirty cash.
And in March last year, CAB officers froze assets worth more than €150,000 when they targeted a suspected cannabis dealer in south and west Dublin.
The freezing orders are the first salvo launched by CAB against suspects and it often takes more than seven years before the High Court decides assets are from the proceed of crime and can be permanently seized and sold by the unit.
But last year, CAB sold seized assets worth more than €2 million and after costs it sent back some €1.838 million to the exchequer.
CAB also has the power to go after people making alleged bogus welfare payments and the figures show that last year it recovered €317,000 previously paid out to claimants.
As well as seizing assets, CAB also has the power to hit people with tax demands on undeclared income – including from the proceeds of crime.
Minister Humphries told Deputy Ó Snodaigh in her Dail answer that last year that CAB, led by Detective Chief Superintendent Michael Gubbins, recovered €2.14 million in taxes from people they have investigated.
