Although he was one of Ireland's most wanted men, Mr Tommy Savage lived openly in Amsterdam, writes Conor Lally.
Although Mr Savage has been one of the Garda's most wanted men for much of the last 15 years for smuggling drugs into the Republic, he now finds himself facing a lengthy prison term as a result of a €50 million drugs deal scuppered by the Greek authorities.
In 1997, the Greek police intercepted a lorry that had just disembarked from a boat at a port in that country. When they looked inside its container, they found four tonnes of cannabis. The merchandise had originated in south-east Asia.
Mr Savage has evaded capture in relation to seized multi-million euro drugs hauls in the past, and probably believed the events of 1997 in Greece would never catch up with him.
While the Greek authorities have persisted in their investigations in the intervening seven years, Mr Savage never went into hiding over the matter. On the contrary, he has been living openly in Amsterdam, where he was running the De Harmonie hotel in the Prinsengracht area of the city.
The 53-year-old from Swords was arrested there on Wednesday morning by Dutch police on foot of the Greek extradition warrant.
Mr Savage is believed to have been behind very large shipments of cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and cannabis from continental Europe into Ireland.
At different times he has been ranked by gardaí among their top three most-wanted men.
He has also been linked to arms shipments, and is believed to have been one of the first foreign-based Irish criminals to supply automatic weapons to drugs gangs in the Republic.
He has arranged shipments of drugs via France to Ireland through ports in Rosslare, Ringaskiddy, Dún Laoghaire and the North Wall.
Apart from his involvement at the highest level of drug-dealing, he has also been involved with the INLA and other paramilitaries. He is wanted for questioning in relation to a number of murders on both sides of the Border.
In the past two years, he has not come to the attention of the authorities here to the same extent as in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s.
"It is difficult to say whether he is less involved in crime or whether he has simply managed to keep a lower profile," one senior Garda source said.
He has convictions for larceny and a number of public order offences, including an assault on a garda in 1991, just before he moved to Amsterdam.
In 1972, he was jailed for three years at the Special Criminal Court for larceny of a motor vehicle. He was tried in the Special Criminal Court because of his links with subversives.
However, he has evaded the authorities here on serious drugs charges because he never returns to Ireland. His considerable wealth has remained out of the reach of the Criminal Assets Bureau because it is all offshore.
As well as having very strong links to Irish drugs gangs in Leinster, Munster and the North, Savage has also forged alliances with foreign criminals and with other Irish drug-dealers living in Spain and the Netherlands.
He has been closely associated with Amsterdam-based drug-dealer George Mitchell, and John Cunningham (53), the man who kidnapped Ms Jennifer Guinness in 1986.