http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/cab...ity-351162.htmlCAB to give overview of republican criminal activity.
The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) is to supply an updated analysis of republican criminal activity to the high-level Garda assessment on the status of the Provisional IRA.
CAB will provide a report on organised crime gangs operated by members and associates of the IRA and an assessment of where the tens of millions of euro earned by it is going.
The development comes as Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald again questioned where the profits earned by republican gangs end up.
Last week, she requested a “fresh assessment” by gardaí into the status of IRA activities following PSNI statements that members were suspected of involvement in the murder of former IRA prisoner John McGuigan.
Security sources said CAB assessments to date have not found evidence of the IRA’s continuing existence as a criminal organisation. CAB has targeted current and former IRA figures, some of whom head organised gangs earning tens of millions of euro from fuel laundering and cigarette smuggling.
Agency experts attempt to follow the “money trail”, much of which goes abroad.
They try to estimate how much goes to the crime gang, how much goes to dissident republicans and, if any, how much goes to the IRA.
Senior sources confirmed that CAB will provide an updated report for the new assessment.
As part of Operation Loft, targeting IRA figure Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy in 2013, an estimated €1.1m was frozen in bank accounts by CAB.
In July 2014, Leonard Hardy, an IRA bomber, was convicted of failing to pay tax returns valued at €280,000. He is repaying CAB almost €500,000 based on earnings from cigarette smuggling.
Last January, he and his wife Donna, also a former IRA member, were arrested in Spain in an operation resulting in the seizure of €5.5m.
Meanwhile, former head of the Garda Special Branch Kevin Donohoe said: “There is no doubt republican activity and criminality is thriving, but it’s a long way from that to saying the Provisional IRA is operating in southern Ireland.”
Based on his time as chief superintendent of the Special Detective Unit, between 2009 and 2013, he said the “Provisional IRA didn’t, and doesn’t, exist, as it did previously”.
