Gardaí investigating money laundering by republican paramilitaries yesterday recovered a further £120,000 when they visited two businessmen whose names came up during an investigation into the operations of a Cork-based financial adviser.
Criminal Assets Bureau detectives recovered almost £100,000 when they visited a businessman in the Millstreet area of north Cork yesterday while they recovered a further £20,000 stg in a follow-up inquiry with a businessman near Rathmore in east Kerry.
Gardaí have taken statements from both men - who are in their late 40s - about how they obtained the cash which was seized by CAB and will now be sent for forensic and other technical examinations to try and establish its origins.
Yesterday's operations in Millstreet and Rathmore follow on from an investigation into the operations of a financial adviser from Farran, between Cork and Macroom, and the discovery of some £2.3 million in the basement of his home last Thursday.
Garda sources were last remaining cautious about linking the latest cash to be recovered with the money stolen in the Northern Bank raid in Belfast on December 20th and stressed the money would have to be forensically examined before any such link could be made.
Garda sources in Cork were also remaining somewhat cautious about suggestions that the £2.3 million recovered at the house in Farran on Thursday and a further £60,000 recovered in Douglas was part of the haul from the Northern Bank raid.
Gardaí in Cork have also started searching and calling to people whose names they obtained when they seized documents and computer equipment from the man's business premises in nearby Ballincollig in mid-Cork.
Over the weekend, CAB officers raided an accountancy firm in an east Cork town on foot of documentation they seized in Ballincollig while they earlier searched the premises of a Cork city-based firm of solicitors which is heavily involved in property development.
"We have over 20 people that we want to visit - every time somebody's name turns up on a document or a computer, they have to be checked out - it's going to take a huge amount of work to unravel this money trail," said one Garda source.
Meanwhile, gardaí in Cork city yesterday released without charge a 47-year-old man whom they arrested in Passage West on Friday afternoon after receiving a report that burnt Northern Ireland bank notes were found near his home in the south Cork town.
Detectives raided the man's house and recovered some half-burnt notes from outside the house as well as two intact notes inside the house where they also found 200 rounds of ammunition for an AK47 assault rifle and €10,000-15,000 worth of cocaine.
The man was arrested under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act on suspicion of membership of an unlawful organisation and brought to Gurranabraher Garda station for questioning but was released without charge yesterday afternoon. A file will now be prepared on the matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said a Garda source, adding that the entire investigation into money laundering by republican paramilitaries could take months to complete.
Gardaí believe that the man was asked to mind the money by a senior figure in the Provisional IRA in Cork after he realised that gardaí were moving to try and recover money which the paramilitary group was trying to launder.
