US federal prosecutors are to seek the extradition of two Irish men and four others as alleged co-conspirators with Workers' Party president Seán Garland and the North Korean government in the manufacture of counterfeit $100 notes.
US authorities will be seeking the arrest of Mr Christopher Corcoran (57), Dublin, and Hugh Todd, an Irish citizen living in South Africa, who have been indicted this week for allegedly helping Mr Garland distribute sophisticated $100 bills, known as 'supernotes', to fund the Workers' Party and the Official IRA.
Mr Garland has strongly denied any wrongdoing and said the indictment is politically motivated.
The indictment names Mr Garland as the leader of the Official IRA, a claim he strongly denies, and claims that North Korean officials introduced counterfeit $100 notes to Ireland in the early 1990s and Mr Garland obtained more of them in Minsk, Belarus.
It says he traded in over $1 million using his Workers' Party position as a front, and that the accused and their associates carried the 'supernotes' between Britain and Ireland on the ferry, because ferry passengers did not undergo security checks.
Mr Garland is accused of going to great lengths to avoid being linked to the scheme.
He is also accused of using Official IRA members to run the operation. The US attorney's office in Washington, at the request of the US secret service, will also be seeking the extradition of five men: Russian national David Levin, also known as David Batikovitch Batikian or Gediminas Gotautas (39), of Birmingham and London; Hugh Todd (68), an Irish and South African citizen living in South Africa and also known by the names FB Rawling and Peter Clark; and three British men: Terence Silcock (50), Mark Adderley (47), and Alan Jones (48), from Birmingham.
The three UK accused were "long-time acquaintances" the indictment says. The indictment lists over 30 trips made by the seven accused to Ireland, Britain, Russia and elsewhere to obtain the counterfeit currency, including over 15 trips made by Mr Silcock on the Britain to Ireland ferry with bag loads of counterfeit money.
In one conversation with two potential counterfeit buyers in July 1999, Mr Silcock and Mr Jones are alleged to have said that Mr Garland was the "colonel in chief" of "the old-style IRA" and that all profit "goes back into the organisation". Mr Corcoran is also accused of making a similar boast.
Mr Garland (71), was released on bail after he was arrested last Friday at the Workers' Party Ardfheis in Belfast on foot of a US extradition warrant.
The indictment claims that Mr Corcoran "has long been associated with Seán Garland and had established a business relationship with defendant Terence Silcock". The US attorney's office claims Mr Garland "operated a years-long scheme" to "obtain, transport, sell, and pass as genuine, counterfeit $100 United States Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs), sometimes referred to as 'supernotes'."
Mr James Church, the secret service agent in charge of the investigation said the prosecution "is one of the most significant related to the 16-year long investigation into the distribution of this family of highly deceptive counterfeit US currency notes".