MEMBERS OF a major criminal gang have been arrested by gardaí investigating drug and gun crime in the west of Ireland.
The nine suspects were being questioned last night under anti-gangland laws introduced last year.
The arrested men are members of the Traveller community and are part of a wider Galway-based crime syndicate that gardaí believe is led by two brothers.
The investigation into the gang’s activities has been going on for six months, but the men’s arrests were hastened by the arrest of a man in Belfast at the weekend for drug smuggling offences. That man is a suspected member of the Galway-based gang. He was detained by the PSNI at the weekend in Belfast after he was found to be in possession of cocaine with a value of €60,000 having disembarked a flight from Spain.
The arrests of the nine other gang members in Galway yesterday occurred during a series of co-ordinated searches of 21 addresses that began at 7am. The operation, led by Asst Commissioner John O’Mahony, involved gardaí from across Galway and members of the Organised Crime Unit, Criminal Assets Bureau and the Armed Regional Support Unit.
Garda sources said the Galwaybased gang of settled Travellers has links to other drug gangs in Sligo and Limerick. They are believed to deal not only in drugs and guns but are also suspects for burglaries across the west and for armed robberies, including attacks on cash in transit vans. The gang is also believed to be behind an extortion and intimidation racket where those being targeted were threatened with extreme violence.
One Garda source said the arrested men are in their 20s and 30s and have emerged as a major organised crime gang in the west of Ireland for a number of years.
“We began a targeted investigation into them last year and these arrests follow on from the work we’ve done on them since then,” the source said. The men were arrested at their homes in different locations across Galway city and county.
Some of the premises raided are located in Bohermore in the city centre and in Rahoon and Ballybane.
Gardaí believe the gang has generated significant wealth from their criminal activities which is believed to have been laundered and invested in property.
A number of solicitors’ and accountants’ offices were raided as part of the co-ordinated searches. Computers and documentation was seized and these items will now be analysed by the Criminal Assets Bureau.
A number of mobile phones and at least four cars were seized during the operation, codenamed Operation Foolscap. It is one of the largest investigations in recent years targeting organised crime outside Dublin or Limerick. The suspects were arrested for alleged offences under the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Act 2009. The legislation was introduced last July and provides for the new offences of directing or participating in an organised crime gang.