The Criminal Assets Bureau is endeavouring to identify properties, assets, and bank accounts controlled by the head of the Lithuanian crime gang operating a network of cannabis grow houses across the country.
This gang is associated with a separate organised crime group from Lithuania that is heavily involved in the heroin trade and behind the violent intimidation of a garda investigating them.
The CAB investigation is part of a co-ordinated initiative involving the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau against Lithuanian gangs.
CAB, backed up by the Armed Response Unit, searched two houses in the Blanchardstown area of west Dublin on Monday.
In a statement, the bureau said: “The CAB investigation relates to a Lithuanian organised crime gang involved in the sale and supply of drugs through a network of cannabis grow houses across the country.
A quantity of financial documents, electronic storage devices, and mobile telephones were seized.
Sources said the two Lithuanian gangs have links but operate in separate areas of the drug trade: one in the domestic cultivation and sale of cannabis, the other involved in the importation and sale of heroin and cocaine.
There are similarities in how they operate.
The gangs are highly organised and hierarchical, have a sizeable number of gang members, and operate across the country.
They sell directly to users, through Lithuanian street dealers specifically brought over to do the job.
Both gangs have to get their profits back to the overall bosses in Lithuania, who control operations from there.
The gang targeted by CAB on Monday has been hit before by the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, which uncovered a number of the grow houses it operates.
CAB examined bureau information and carried out its own investigation before the search operation.
Through searches, the bureau can get evidence in relation to property ownership and assets that it didn’t previously know about, as they might be in the name of other people.
The main target is based in Lithuania, but there are other members of the hierarchy here that CAB is interested in.
Officers suspect that hundreds of thousands of euro may have been sent back to Lithuania, where they believe it is reinvested in the drugs trade.
A feature of the Lithuanian gangs is that they bring over what sources describe as “young, vulnerable” people who they consider to be also “loyal” to work for them in Ireland.
This includes working in the grow houses, as well as distributing and selling the drugs on the street.
By their closed nature, it is more difficult for gardaí to infiltrate the networks.
The other heroin-dealing Lithuanian gang, based in north Dublin and operating nationally, has taken violent measures in response to efforts by gardaí to thwart its operation.
As reported in
, these include an apparent acid-attack on a garda, who received facial injuries, a second incident involving criminal damage to the garda’s home, and a third incident where two gang members turned up outside his child’s school.Sources said it shows that the gang was not going to let anyone, even police, stand in its way.
The heroin gang has been in operation since around 2012, and has commanded a chunk of the heroin trade in particular.
Its presence has been seen across the island, including in Belfast, Drogheda, Dublin, Carlow, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Tralee, Limerick, and Galway.
The gang has to both import the drugs from abroad and find a way to send the money back to Lithuania.