Gardaí step up money laundering investigation
Gardaí tonight stepped up their search for missing millions as they mounted an unprecedented security operation to bust a major IRA money laundering operation.
With the Sinn Féin leadership of Gerry Adams facing its biggest crisis since the peace process began, senior garda officers believe vast amounts of cash have been hidden away throughout the country and overseas.
More than 100 detectives are now involved in an investigation which could run for months in a bid to identify everyone linked to an act of criminality, the scale of which has astonished the Government.
Four people, including a top businessman and at least one Sinn Féin member, were still being questioned tonight after police seized almost £2.5m (€3.6m).
Don Bullman, a chef from Cork, who was arrested as part of the inquiry when almost €100,000 was allegedly discovered hidden in an empty washing up powder box in a jeep, has been charged with IRA membership.
Two men from Derry, also with republican connections, were released without charge pending a report being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Computers and dozens of documents were seized in a series of raids and searches on homes and properties in Derry, Dublin, Cork, Dundalk, Co Louth and Co Offaly.
One of the homes searched belonged to the brother of one of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s most trusted industrial relations trouble-shooters, Phil Flynn.
A spokeswoman for Mr Ahern said the Taoiseach was considering Mr Flynn’s position on the government’s decentralisation implementation body.
In one operation 17 sackfuls of cash were removed from the house of Co Cork businessman Ted Cunningham, 57, but police on both sides of the border were still unable to confirm if any of the £26.5m (€38m) stolen from the Northern Bank in Belfast just before Christmas was among the haul of over £2m (€2.89m).
Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy confirmed his officers were investigating IRA links, but it was the scale and apparent sophistication of the operation which astounded justice minister Michael McDowell and the Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy, who is due to announce sanctions against Sinn Féin because of the Provisonals’ alleged involvement in the bank raid next week.
Mr McDowell said the garda investigation had been a major effort in overcoming the threat to Irish democracy posed by the money laundering operation.
“The investigation has been a massive success so far,” he said. “The Provisional movement is a colossal criminal machine laundering huge sums of money.
“Their mask has now slipped. Their balaclavas have come off.”
Although police chiefs have said that the republican movement was behind the money laundering operation, Mr Ahern insisted that Sinn Féin would not be excluded from the Northern Ireland peace process.
“We had 30 years of exclusion in Northern Ireland and all we ended up with was thousands of people killed and maimed,” he said.
Asked if he felt justified in blaming the Northern Bank robbery on the IRA and claiming Sinn Féin had prior knowledge, Mr Ahern said: “I wouldn’t have said what I said if I hadn’t been given the advice I was given.”
Mr Conroy confirmed that one of those arrested is involved in the Sinn Féin party.
He said hundreds of detectives were involved in the cross-border operation, which will require thousands of man hours to complete.
He revealed that a member of the public had entered a Garda station and handed over an extra £175,000. He also urged others who may have unwittingly come into possession of suspect cash in dubious circumstances to hand it in.
A senior police source said the operation was being spearheaded by officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau and the fraud squad.
He said detectives from both sides of the Irish border had been working together on the investigation for months and were probing links to smuggling and the theft of cars in Ireland for sale in the UK to fund subversive groups.
The source said the arrests were part of a wider ongoing investigation.
Seventeen bags of money were removed from the home of businessman Ted Cunningham in Farran, outside Cork city, this morning and taken to Dublin for forensic examination.
Around £26.5m (€38m) sterling was stolen from the Northern Bank in Belfast on December 20 in a raid that has been blamed on the Provisional IRA. But the IRA and Sinn Féin have repeatedly denied involvement.
Mr Adams stood by his party’s denials today.
As Gardaí continued to question former Sinn Féin member, the West Belfast MP said people should not rush to judge republicans over the arrests.
Mr Adams, who is preparing to return to Ireland from Spain, said he had no reason to doubt the IRA’s repeated denials about its involvement in the Northern Bank raid.
“I have asked for a full report from our party head office, so I can deal with this when I return,” he said. “I think people have to be very measured.
“As we speak I have no reason to change what I have said publicly.
“But let’s be clear, Sinn Féin will not run away from our responsibilities on any of these matters.
“We would not have been able to play the role we have played in the peace process by ignoring issues or by not changing events and developments over the years.”
Mark Durkan, the leader of the SDLP, said the situation vindicated his view that the provisional movement is running a very structured criminal enterprise.
“They are filling their coffers from robberies, racketeering, smuggling and money laundering,” he said.
“Confronted by any of this Sinn Féin have quoted their mandate and tried to deny, dismiss and excuse all these crimes.”
Democratic Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson insisted it was “crunch time” for the British and Irish Governments.
“They must begin to take steps to put the Provos out of business. The IRA are an impediment to peace,” he said.
They show no signs of being willing to end all of their various illegal activities or decommission their terrorist arsenals.
“There must be no more pussy footing about with this dangerous terrorist and criminal organisation.”
