The High Court has frozen almost £100,000 in bank accounts in the name of an unemployed man following an application by Criminal Assets Bureau officers pursuing the £2.8 million stolen in the Brink's-Allied robbery in Dublin in 1995.
He has also received a tax assessment for £300,000.
Officers from the bureau brought the injunction against Mr Jeffrey Ennis (31), of Spencer Street, Dublin. An affidavit submitted to the court said Mr Ennis was suspected of being a member of the gang which carried out the robbery on January 24th, 1995.
Mr Ennis was one of two men arrested in Coolock shortly after the robbery. He was questioned for two days but released without charge.
The affidavit said Mr Ennis had a record of convictions for minor criminal offences including larceny, car thefts and receiving stolen goods. He was tried and acquitted in relation to one serious armed robbery charge six years ago.
No one has been charged with the Brink's-Allied robbery. However, the Criminal Assets Bureau has spent months building up files about property and cash belonging to a number of north Dublin men who are suspected of carrying out the robbery as well as other armed robberies dating back to the mid1980s.
The gang under investigation is led by a man in his 30s who lives in the Clontarf area.
The CAB is examining the ownership of a number of public houses, other commercial premi ses, apartments and houses mainly located in north inner Dublin.
They also have details of large cash transactions through accounts in the names of men who have been claiming unemployment benefit for most of their adult lives. The total assets involved are understood to be worth several million pounds.
Yesterday's High Court affidavit stated that the Criminal Assets Bureau believed Mr Ennis was in the process of moving up to £100,000 from bank and building societies in his name. The High Court granted a mereva injunction freezing the assets.
Yesterday's High Court action is the first in what is expected to be a series of revenue-driven actions against suspects in the Brink's-Allied case which are part of a bureau investigation known as Operation Alpha.
In the course of this operation, the bureau has issued a number of tax assessments running to hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Last Tuesday a tax assessment of almost £300,000 was issued to Mr Ennis, the High Court heard. This was followed by yesterday's injunction. A CAB officer stated in court it was his belief that Mr Ennis was trying to move his assets out of the reach of the authorities.
In the Brink's-Allied robbery, a gang of six men drove two fourwheel-drive cars into the cash depot at Cloghran near Dublin Airport. They held staff at gunpoint while seizing bags containing cash. They escaped by driving across fields towards the Santry by-pass.
It was the second-largest armed robbery in the history of the State, after £3.4 million was taken from an Allied Irish Banks cash centre in Waterford the previous year.