Criminal Assets Bureau Annual Report For 2024 Published.

Over €17m diverted from criminals to the Irish exchequer.

The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) is a multi-agency statutory body established under the Criminal Assets Bureau Act 1996. The Bureau’s remit is to target a person’s assets, wherever situated, which derive, or are suspected to derive, directly or indirectly, from criminal conduct. Since its inception, the Bureau has been at the forefront of fighting organised crime in this jurisdiction and disrupting the activities of criminal gangs by depriving them of ill-gotten assets.

The Bureau has staff drawn from An Garda Síochána, the Office of the Revenue Commissioners (including Customs), the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Justice.

The latest Annual Report from the Bureau has now been published for 2024, showing €17.052 million was returned to the Irish Exchequer, due to their activities.

The Bureau sold twenty forfeited properties by 2024; the highest number sold in any one year. One of these properties was sold for €931,000, one of the highest sales prices ever achieved for any one asset.

An updated Proceeds of Crime Bill is now understood to be making its way through the Oireachtas currently and if implemented same is expected to strengthen the State’s ability to further identify, freeze, and confiscate assets linked to serious and organised crime. Once passed into law, the Criminal Assets Bureau should have stronger investigative powers and will be able to dispose of assets much more quickly than is currently the case.

Some of the Bureau’s other key achievements of the year included:

• 46 search operations conducted, consisting of 227 individual searches in 13 counties.
• 21 new cases commenced under the Proceeds of Crime Act during 2024.
• Submission of 30 new Proceeds of Crime files to the Criminal Asset Section of the Chief State Solicitor’s Office for progression through the courts.
• The Bureau held its second publicly advertised online auction which received global interest, realising in excess of €216k.
  

Yet one must be forgiven for asking, is this simply yet another tax generated on the hard pressed, ordinary Irish household?

Let us think for a moment:-

(1) Crimes in question are rightly identified by Criminal Assets Bureau.
(2) Proceeds amounting to €17.052 million are now returned to the Irish Exchequer.
Question: What fraction of this significant sum will actually be channelled back into local rural communities, where the crime identified first originated?
Note: Every time a drug seizure is made, criminals take to rural Ireland to steal/plunder, often by force, valuables, goods etc, from the residents in towns and villages, to the benefit of the Irish Exchequer.

“Surely this amounts to a tax in another name”.

We wait to see how much of this €17.052 million, will be returned to Irish local communities.

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