THIS IS the man behind a European crime wave in which millions of euro worth of rhino horn exhibits have been stolen.

The traveller-trader from Rathkeale is one of a core group known to have made a fortune flogging rhino horns to China. The exhibits stolen from a stor-age facility in Swords, Co. Dublin, this week were still on display and within arms reach when the Sunday World first revealed the scam two years ago. The audacious robbery of the muse-um warehouse this week is the latest in dozens of raids across Europe since 2010. A key player, `Smokey Burns' previ-ously featured in the Sunday World thanks to his lucrative international tobacco smuggling operation. Others have close links to the tar-mac crews who travel all over Europe doing botch jobs for over-inflated prices. Just after the Sunday World expose, the rhino exhibits were moved to a warehouse in north County Dublin for safe-keeping.

Rhino horns can command as much as €60,000 per kilo on the black mar-ket, supplying Chinese traditional veal the traveller medicine makers. On Wednesday four rhino heads were stolen from the warehouse in what appears to have been a careful-ly organised raid. Gardai were alerted shortly after midnight by a security man at the premises. At about 10.40pm three masked men entered the building and tied up the security man on duty. The three men loaded the rhino heads and horns from the building into a large white van. The raiders were in the building for approximate-ly one hour. The security man, who was uninjured, later freed himself svp=ges:foeci The thieves knew exactly what they were looking for in a warehouse the size of two football pitches. Museum staff confirmed that nothing else was taken during the raid. The keeper of the Natural History Museum, Nigel Monaghan, said this week the robbery was well planned.

"It looks like a targeted robbery with a specific agenda. It's not unusu-al. Unfortunately, there's been quite a few of these across Europe," he said. "Rhinoceros are poached in the wild so people can cut off the horn of the animal they've just killed and this is basically an easier target. They go and find museums, stately homes, private individuals with big-game tro-phies or decorative artworks made Out of rhino horns." With more than 60 raids reported from Scandinavia to Portugal, the gang has attracted intense police attention. In a recent Europol report they were count-ed among 3,600 identified organised criminal gangs operating in Europe. The major players among the Rathkeale traveller-trader communi-ty stay at arm's length from the hoods who carry out: the raids. Contacts based in England and, to buyers in China, where it is highly-prized as an ingredient in traditional medical cures. However, the criminals contracted to carry out the robberies or who are trying to cash in have used more vio-lent methods to get their hands on rhino horns. In one raid in July 2011, would-be robbers used tear gas to subdue secu-rity_ guards at a museum in Liege, Belgium. Police arrested two British nationals and recovered a rhino horn at a roadblock.

They told cops they had been promised €3,000 for the raid and had been ordered to leave the rhino horn near a statue in Holland. In the UK last year an antiques deal-er was beaten unconscious as he chased thieves who snatched a rhino horn from him. The dealer in Nottingham had set up a meeting with potential buyers at a McDonald's restaurant when he was targeted. In a series of raids in Germany dur-ing June 2011, thieves hit a string of museums snatching a total of eight rhino horns worth up to -€2 Last year the Sunday World pub-lished a photograph that was being touted around Rathkeale in the wake of one robbery in the UK. A source claimed that the exhibit was worth €200,000 and that three members of the Rathkeale traveller community who had played a minor role got €16,000 as their share. Convicted The involvement of Rathkeale trav-eller traders emerged in January 2010 when customs officers seised a cache of eight horns at Shannon airport. This year brothers Jeremiah and Michael O'Brien were convicted of illegally importing the horns, which had since risen in value from €500,000 to €1.5 million.

Two other young Rathkeale men were arrested in 2010 in a sting oper-ation in the United States and later jailed for six months. One of those, Richard 'Kerry' O'Brien, was previously jailed in Belgium for cigarette smuggling. His father, Richard senior, is regard-ed as one of the wealthiest traders from the County Limerick town. O'Brien junior and his brother-in-law Michael Hegarty travelled to the US after a buyer responded to an email sent out to taxidermists all over the world. The email sought mounted rhino head exhibits for an African-themed hotel due to open County Kerry. Another two Rathkeale men are currently subject to extradition pro-ceedings in Ireland, One man is want-ed in connection with a rhino horn robbery in the UK and the other over a robbery in Austria.