Smoking gun Real IRA use Chinese ships to smuggle cigs worth €80m a year.
THE Real IRA is using huge ‘mother-ships’ from China to flood Ireland with fake fags — and make €80million a year for terrorist coffers. It has also set up two secret cigarette manufacturing plants along the Border between the Republic and the North. Customs, Gardai and the PSNI say the ‘brains’ behind the operation are top-ranking members of the Real IRA. And the thugs are laughing all the way to the bank after Health Minister James Reilly announced he will introduce plain packaging for all tobacco products. A senior Customs source said last night: “The Minister might be well-meaning, but he is playing right into the hands of the Real IRA and their criminal cronies. “They won’t have to copy hundreds of different packs any more — because they’ll all look the same.”
Rifle butts ... RIRA thugs have turned to ciggie smuggling to make a fortune The scam’s ‘main man’ is a 48-year-old former member of the IRA’s ruling Army Council — jailed for 25 years in 1995 for possession of explosives. Once a commander of the Provos’ notorious East Tyrone Brigade, police say he runs the operation with a 57-year-old terrorist who got 15 years in the mid-1980s for a landmine attack on the UDR. That man is currently in jail in the North for failing to pay STG£500,000 in duty after he was caught with 15 million cigarettes. Both men have a deep hatred of British security forces — close family members were shot dead by specialist army and police units. A source said: “The Real IRA is making a fortune but there is not a single person behind bars in the Republic for this.” The RIRA sources the cheap fags in China for as little as 20 cents a pack and has them transported on enormous freighters to European ports. They are brought to Ireland on smaller ships by legitimate hauliers who believe they are carrying legal goods. Once the smokes land safely in Ireland, the RIRA uses a network of gangs to distribute them. Their illegal manufacturing plants are in the South Armagh, North Monaghan/ Louth area. A source said: “They bring in tobacco for the final stages of cigarette production.”
