SENIOR gardai , accused of colluding with a major drug trafficker have been cleared of all wrongdoing,

The Sunday World can reveal that the Director of Public i Prosecutions (DPP) has decided that no officers will face charges in the case of convicted drug deal-er Kieran Boylan. The decision is a blow to the Garda Ombudsman, which spent four years and a . massive amount of money investigating the alleged , collusion between senior detectives and Boylan.

Sources say that the — Ombudsman was confident that at least one garda would 4 face charges, but the DPP did not liti' feel there was any evidence to justify bringing a criminal prosecution, despite a file being sent 4 which ran to hundreds of pages.

The careers of several respected ‘senior officers have been damaged by the allegations that they allowed Boylan to operate in exchange for information about rival dealers, but sources say that 4 the officers have now been totally 'vindicated. The 42-year-old haulier from Ardee, Co. Louth, was first busted.

No evidenceto suggest collusion in drugs case in 2003 in connection with a €750,000 haul of cocaine. He was on bail awaiting trial when he was again arrested by detectives from the Garda National Drugs Unit (GNDU) in October 2005 in the yard of his haulage business.

He was in possession of €1.7m worth of cocaine and heroin. It had been claimed that while Boylan was in custody he said he was working for a senior detective and claimed he had been involved in several entrapment operations where smaller players were arrested.

He was charged with the possession of drugs with intent for sale or supply, but the charges were later dropped. They were then reinstated, but in 2008 the State dropped them again. In the meantime he was jailed in 2006 for three years for the 2003 bust. Gardai then conducted an internal inquiry into the Boylan case.However, the Garda Ombudsman's office was not happy and launched its own investigation soon afterwards.It spent the last four years trying to build a case.

The Ombudsman had investigated whether Boylan was given favourable treatment by the Gardai because he was involved in setting up other drug dealers for arrest. Officials also probed whether this was a factor in the charges being dropped by the DPP and whether gar-dai knew he was using his haulage business to import drugs. It was also alleged that senior gar-dai colluded with Boylan to get him an internationarhaulage licence and provided false and misleading infor-mation to the Department of Transport, saying that he had no drugs convictions.

His licence was subsequently revoked. Hindering A British Sunday newspaper has written extensively about the Boylan case, alleging all sorts of wrongdoing against officers, including that gardai were hindering the investigation by non-cooperation.

This led Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan to make an unprece-dented intervention last November, saying: "I was quite surprised when I saw the report, given the level of co-operation there has been between the two bodies. "I have cooperated fully and facili-tated fully all of the inquiries that the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission have requested. It would be unwise to go beyond that given that the report will be available in a number of weeks."

Although gardai were cleared of doing anything wrong in their deal-ings with Boylan, a new system for dealing with informants was introduced after the case. All informants must now be officially registered.