The Garda’s operation into Irish criminals infiltrated by the takedown of an encrypted messaging platform, Ghost, has now expanded and resulted in the seizure of drugs valued at almost €16 million. The number of arrests has also increased to 11 suspects in custody.
While the main Irish gang compromised is The Family based in west Dublin, other Irish criminals were also using the platform, which appears to have been run from Sydney, Australia, but was being used by criminals around the world.
In total, three Irish gangs are at the centre of the Irish component of the investigation being run by the Garda arising from the supposedly private messages accessed by international law enforcement over a period of months.
As well as the 11 arrests made in the Republic, gardaí have also seized 42 devices used to access the Ghost messaging platform and 153 other electronic devices.
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In an operation led by the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, about half of the drugs seized – cocaine valued at up to €8 million – was found in a truck in rural Co Wexford on Monday night. Four suspects were arrested there and another detained in a follow-up operation in Dublin.
When gardaí moved in on the group of suspects in Co Wexford, one of the trucks was found to have a concealed compartment, opened and closed by hydraulics, in which the seized cocaine was hidden when being imported into the Republic.
However, since then the operation – called Operation Kraken in Australia – has now yielded a much larger quantity of drugs and cash in the Republic.
This includes cocaine valued at €15.2 million, €350,000 in cash, €320,000 in cannabis, €100,000 in heroin and some cryptocurrency.
As the searches were carried out in Ireland, the Garda teams involved in that work, including this week, were aided on the ground by officers from the FBI, Australian Federal Police and Europol.
Assistant Commissioner Justin Kelly, speaking at a Europol event in The Hague on Wednesday morning where the results of the major international operation were revealed, said the law enforcement operation across the globe aimed to “disrupt, degrade and dismantle” dangerous gangs.
The Irish component of the operation was very significant as Irish criminals had adapted more readily to the Ghost platform than gangs in almost every other country under investigation. And while four drug trafficking gangs from Ireland were now under investigation, so too was a suspected facilitator of the Ghost platform in Ireland.
Mr Kelly added the operation was “particularly significant” for Ireland as the Republic had “the second highest number of users” of the Ghost platform. There was also a “significant cryptocurrency element” in Ireland, with gardaí currently “working through that”.
“I can assure you, there will be further arrests,” he said of the Irish operation. Mr Kelly, who leads the Garda’s Organised and Serious Crime branch, said the Irish gangs targeted not only operated in the Republic, but were also transnational in nature.
Because of that, it was vital the Garda was able to work with police forces from all over the world on the operation, as “it takes a network to defeat a network”.
Europol, the European policing agency, described the international operation as “a major action against an encrypted communication platform used for criminal activities, such as large-scale drugs trafficking, homicides and money laundering”.
The FBI, Canadian Mounted Police, French National Gendarmerie and Australian Federal Police were also involved, along with authorities in Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden.
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