Gardaí believe they are on the way to breaking a major crime operation which includes drug-dealing and illegal moneylending following a search operation in the Waterford area targeting numerous homes and rented properties yesterday morning. The raids targeted one extended family in Waterford city, believed to be involved in lending money to vulnerable families and individuals and terrorising them to repay multiples of the original loans.
The criminals are going to such lengths as retaining their victims’ children’s allowance details and other social welfare books to ensure the money collected is paid to them as part of their “loan” repayments.
Among the items seized during the searches were significant sums of cash, a firearm, illegal drugs, financial documentation, and other material suspected of being stolen.
Up to 40 people arrested as part of the operation in Waterford over the last year are believed to have been pressurised into committing serious crime by members of the family at the centre of the network.
Families
Gardaí now hope that other individuals and families who have been targeted by the gang will come forward in confidence and give statements.
Up to 120 gardaí from several divisions, including the Criminal Assets Bureau and the armed support units, were involved in the raids which got under way in Waterford shortly before 7am. No arrests were made but the operation is ongoing and yesterday's raids on up to 25 properties owned by the crime family, and believed to have been bought with crime proceeds, is the latest phase.
Members of the family live in some of the properties involved, believed to be in the Ballybeg and Ardmore Park estates in the city, while others are rented to tenants. Members of the Criminal Assets Bureau seized a large amount of documentation during the searches and this will form part of the direction taken by gardaí with the wider investigation.
One eye-witness who didn’t want to be named said he observed a high level of activity in the city: “I was getting the papers on Barrack Street before seven o’clock and I saw a big convoy of guards passing, heading out of town from their station at Ballybricken,” he said.
The witness saw over a dozen marked and unmarked Garda cars and vans, along with two or three armed support unit vehicles, in the space of about two minutes. “Later on, I saw the Garda helicopter flying over the Cork Road,” he said. “It was obviously a big operation and not what we’re used to in Waterford on a Tuesday morning, or any other morning.”
“People are often slow to come forward,” one garda involved in the operation said yesterday. “Certainly we have documentation that would suggest it’s a pretty extensive network [of moneylending]. It’s frightening the level of control they have over people.”