The High Court has found a house, a former shop premises, car and cash seized from a convicted drug dealer and members of his family were funded by the proceeds of crime.
Mr Justice Alexander Owens was satisfied the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) had established, on the face of it, that each of the items were under the control of Dermot Calvert (53), his wife Martina Harty (37), his daughter Stacey Calvert (31) or by one or more of them.
Mr Calvert, a father of 15 who formerly lived at Fairview Crescent, Limerick, has 91 convictions, mostly road traffic related, but of which four relate to the sale and supply of drugs, the CAB told the court.
The CAB applied to the court for civil proceeds of crime orders over a house at Singland Crescent, Garryowen, Limerick, which is owned by Stacey and at the back of which is an apartment where her father and Ms Harty lived.
The application also related to a former shop at Cloughan Court, Garryowen, which is being converted into a residence.
It also relates to €17,145 cash and some sterling seized from Singland Crescent in June 2019 and another €5,680 from the same property in June 2021. There was also a 171 D VW Passat motor car seized.
The Singland Crescent house was bought in a derelict state for €17,250 in 2014 with the money paid directly to the vendor and at what the CAB said was a significant undervalue and sourced from illegitimate funds.
Social welfare payments to Mr Calvert, Ms Harty and to Stacey do not not explain the sources of the money, it alleged.
Barrister Grainne O’Neill, for the CAB, told the court Mr Calvert was a “career criminal” who has associations with prominent criminals and has no visible source of legitimate income.
He received social welfare payments for most of the time from 2002 to late 2017, much of which he was not entitled to, the court heard.
He has signed “numerous” social welfare assessments that were false. When asked how he funded the 2019 purchase of a €7,000 van, he said it was a “few scams, ‘tomo’ jobs and window cleaning”, she said.
He also denied that the Singland Crescent house, which had the apartment added to it later, and is now valued at €170,000, was renovated using criminal monies.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Owens said there was no acceptable evidence to rebut evidence of a prima facie probability that the cash seized by gardaí in the apartment at Singland Crescent in June 2019 and June 2021 was drug dealing money.
There was also no basis on which he could be satisfied that the making of proceeds of crime orders in relation to Cloughan Court and the seizing of the two amounts of cash or the VW Passat would result in a serious injustice, he said.
The position in relation to Singland Crescent was a little more complex, he said.
While it is owned by Stacey Calvert, its current condition has been subsidised by her father’s proceeds of crime.
Her only contribution to this property was a payment of €14,000 at a time when Singland Crescent was virtually valueless, he said.
She depended on her father to pay for her motor cars and to put this property into a condition which enabled her to live there.
She has had a very bad break in life in that she has two young daughters with cystic fibrosis, he said.
However, he said she chose to benefit from proceeds of crime by accepting the benefit of Singland Crescent prior to suffering her current misfortune.
While the State will have to eventually rehouse her when Singland Crescent is sold by the State, the judge noted CAB, in the special circumstances of this case, will allow her and her children to continue to reside in Singland Crescent for seven years from the date of the court’s order relating to this property.
This will give Stacy Calvert and her children the advantage of being allowed to reside rent free in property which they do not own and which must eventually be disposed of for the benefit of the people of Ireland, he said.
He said it was also necessary to make some allowance to compensate Ms Calvert for her €14,000 contribution to the purchase of this property and he proposed declaring she has a 20 per cent equitable lien on the sale proceeds.
