In the Republic at present, cleaning and disguising the origins of criminal money has permeated every type of business imaginable. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re talking about beauty salons, tanning shops, barber shops, dry cleaners, pubs, fast-food restaurants, you name it,\u201d said one Garda source. He added once a business has an inward flow of cash, criminal money can be mixed in and passed off as legitimate trading income. <\/p>\n
Money laundering is a lucrative endeavour. A diverse, and growing, cohort of people across the country is involved or currently stands accused.<\/p>\n
Dublin Central byelection candidate Gerry Hutch<\/a>, the veteran criminal known as the Monk, is at the centre of a big money-laundering investigation in Spain. <\/p>\n Others who have recently been charged in court, or been convicted, and in some cases jailed, include those on the breadline and middle-class professionals, Irish citizens and immigrants, teenagers and pensioners.<\/p>\n In 2017, just 53 money-laundering offences were recorded in the Republic\u2019s official crime data. That increased to 996 offences in 2024 before surging to 2,768 such crimes last year. And that\u2019s just the cases we know about. <\/p>\n So many of these crimes have been reported to the Garda; they have a backlog of tens of thousands waiting to be opened and examined. <\/p>\n When garda\u00ed began looking into a Co Limerick garage it was already doing \u20ac8 million in car sales a year. None of the individuals involved in the motor dealership has been prosecuted through the courts for the criminal offence of money laundering.<\/p>\n The Criminal Assets Bureau<\/a> (Cab) had gathered intelligence about the Limerick garage and the men behind it. But at some point they needed to burst in and raid the place. That day came seven years ago, though the tail end of this case has only just played out.<\/p>\n On a March morning in 2019, a huge team of garda\u00ed mustered near the premises on the Old Ballysimon Road, on the outskirts of the city, before striking. Members of the Emergency Response Unit, with their firearms drawn, took up position around the perimeter as dawn was breaking. <\/p>\n One of their colleagues used an angle grinder, sparks flying from it, to cut open the locks. The Garda team eventually burst inside, swarming the premises. So many vehicles were seized there \u2013 115 in all \u2013 that it made for one of the biggest operations in Cab\u2019s near 30-year history.<\/p>\n The garage was Stephen Bawn Motors Limited and its main shareholder Stephen O\u2019Sullivan, a 43-year-old from Farrehy, Broadford, Co Limerick. He was later charged with paying a Garda member \u20ac20,000 for information about the Cab\u2019s investigation into his business. But in February, that case collapsed in court.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Money laundering surges to unprecedented levels in RepublicOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n However, the Cab went to the High Court to pursue one of its assets confiscation cases. The vehicles had a combined estimated value of \u20ac2 million when seized and the bureau wanted the entire fleet declared the proceeds of crime. <\/p>\n The Cab\u2019s officers contended O\u2019Sullivan and his associates \u2013 Mike Nash and Shane Curtin, both from Newcastle West, Co Limerick \u2013 \u201cran this business and were in league with criminals\u201d. <\/p>\n When the men came together in late 2015 to take a lease on the garage, they had been selling cars individually, making less than \u20ac25,000 each annually. They weren\u2019t much good at this and had no money to invest in their new venture. They were only ever extended \u20ac75,000 in bank loans, a pittance in the motor trade.<\/p>\n Yet in their first financial year trading, they boasted a turnover of \u20ac5.3 million, exceeding \u20ac8 million the following year. So where did all this money suddenly come from?<\/p>\n \u201cMuch of the company\u2019s capital to trade in cars was funded from unknown sources. Proceeds of sale of many cars sold by the company disappeared,\u201d the High Court concluded in ruling almost all of the seized cars were the proceeds of crime.<\/p>\n It found the garage \u201cwas an engine of fraud, fuelled by money laundering\u201d. It wasn\u2019t a good business gone bad, it was bad from the start. Its apparent success as a genuine motor trade company was \u201cillusory\u201d. <\/p>\n In the first year of trading alone, the business made cash purchases of vehicles to the tune of \u20ac946,921. The origins of that money were unknown and remain unexplained. In that first year, withdrawals reached \u20ac879,523, some \u20ac459,432 of it in cash. <\/p>\n Curtin and Nash were suspected of having control of the business, especially Nash, and both were linked to drug trafficking in Cab\u2019s evidence to the High Court. Another man \u2013 John O\u2019Donoghue from Rathkeale, Co Limerick \u2013 was also alleged to be involved in running the garage. <\/p>\n Cab told the court O\u2019Donoghue had links to the Keane drugs gang in Limerick and the Kinahan cartel. Meanwhile, Curtin was linked \u2013 through an unnamed associate \u2013 to the McCarthy-Dundon gang.<\/p>\n The Keanes and the McCarthy-Dundons are the biggest drugs gangs in Limerick. They are bitter enemies and once engaged in a decade-long feud, to 2010, linked to as many as 20 murders. There is no suggestion whatsoever that any of the men linked to the garage were involved in that feud.<\/p>\n Most of the members of both gangs live in council houses on Limerick\u2019s most impoverished estates. Yet these rival groupings were linked to the same money laundering operation with an \u20ac8 million annual turnover. <\/p>\n Criminal money from Ireland was being used to buy cars in Britain, via shady collaborators there working as car dealers. The vehicles were then imported into Ireland, where they were sold and the proceeds withdrawn from Bawn Motors.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s perhaps what most people envisage when they think of money laundering. Dirty money, generated from crime, going into a business \u2013 often by sleight of hand \u2013 and coming out the other end clean; at least purporting to be clean.<\/p>\n But the reality is often quite different as even some street drug dealers are now refusing to take cash and insist on electronic payments, with knock-on implications for money laundering.<\/p>\n The Central Bank defines money laundering as \u201cthe process by which the proceeds of crime are processed \u2013 \u2018washed\u2019 \u2013 through the financial system in an effort to disguise their illegal origin\u201d. It says the process typically involves three stages; placement, layering and integration.<\/p>\n Placement is when \u201cthe cash proceeds of criminal activity enter into the financial system\u201d. Layering involves the movement of money \u2013 often multiple times, including via another jurisdiction. This creates \u201clayers of financial transactions to thwart the audit trail so as to cut the link with the original crime\u201d.<\/p>\n The final stage is \u201cintegration\u201d \u2013 the reintroduction of previously tainted money into the legitimate economy \u2013 so it \u201cdoes not draw casting eyes to its origins\u201d and \u201cgives off an appearance of legitimacy\u201d.<\/p>\n The Central Bank stresses all three stages do not have to be present in order for money laundering to occur. Crucially, it says any stage in isolation represents money laundering.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Why is money laundering on the rise in Ireland?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Garda\u00ed and legal sources point out that means the simple movement of criminal funds in a bid to distance it from its true origins is a money laundering offence. Even moving a very modest sum derived from crime, and doing that just once, constitutes money laundering. <\/p>\n Under the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010, people can be charged with money laundering even if a predicate offence \u2013 the crime that generated the money \u2013 is unproven or unidentified.<\/p>\n Furthermore, garda\u00ed do not even have to prove a suspect knew the money they were moving derived from crime. Instead, if the suspect was \u201creckless as to whether or not\u201d the money was the proceeds of crime they are, under law, \u201cpresumed\u201d to have known.<\/p>\n In past eras, most crimes generated hard cash; bank robberies, drug crime, selling stolen property. That cash had to be mixed with the legitimate cash income of businesses for the purposes of laundering it. <\/p>\n However, the face of crime has changed, with a lot of offending now taking place online. And that has fundamentally changed money laundering. Oftentimes in Ireland, laundering is not the process of washing dirty money to make it clean. It is simply moving the money about in online account transfers to distance it from its true origin.<\/p>\n Europol\u2019s latest EU Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment said \u201cthe internet has become the primary theatre for organised crime\u201d. As technology has evolved and proliferated \u2013 smartphones, internet banking, online retailing, online bill payment, online investing and cryptocurrency \u2013 new opportunities have been created to perpetrate thefts, scams and frauds.<\/p>\n This includes scams conducted via bogus texts, calls and emails which became so common in Ireland during the pandemic years and have endured. These are often designed to trick victims into sharing codes required to access their online bank accounts, so their money can be stolen. <\/p>\n The proceeds of those online bank account robberies must be moved electronically, into accounts controlled by the fraudsters. And every single transfer is a money laundering crime.<\/p>\n Other forms of online crimes include exploiting vulnerable people \u2013 often older women using dating apps \u2013 in romance frauds; tricking these women into paying over sums of money to fraudsters posing as romantic interests online. <\/p>\n Garda\u00ed said perhaps the fastest growing online crime type is investment fraud. Victims are duped online into \u201cbuying\u201d non-existent cryptocurrency or bogus stocks and shares via fake trading platforms. These platforms are created by the criminals and are usually sophisticated and very convincing.<\/p>\n All of these offences \u2013 collectively known as cyber-enabled crime \u2013 have one thing in common. The money is always being stolen online; electronically accessed by the fraudsters or transferred by the victims on the internet.<\/p>\n And that means the perpetrators constantly need access to accounts in other people\u2019s names to take receipt of the initial sum stolen or scammed. Then, they need many more accounts to disperse that money quickly in a bid to conceal its origins. This dispersal is a form of \u201clayering\u201d, also known as \u201csmurfing\u201d. <\/p>\n The people recruited into allowing their accounts be used for this purpose, usually on the promise of a commission fee, are known as \u201cmoney mules\u201d.<\/p>\n This week Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly<\/a> told The Irish Times the increase in money-laundering crimes in the Republic, especially last year\u2019s surge, was \u201cobviously concerning\u201d.<\/p>\n Specialist training had been extended to garda\u00ed in a bid to identify and combat laundering as part of organised crime, with prosecutions arising. But laundering could also be linked to terrorist financing, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had success with prosecutions on both sides and we\u2019ve seen actors here trying to support terrorist organisations through finance raising. We\u2019ve conducted extensive investigations [into money laundering] but obviously we are concerned about the rise in it.\u201d<\/p>\n Det Supt Micheal Cryan of the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau<\/a> (GNECB), the specialist unit that investigates money laundering, has repeatedly warned of an \u201cexplosion\u201d in the recruitment of money mules. This gained pace in Ireland during the pandemic years as online scams took off. <\/p>\n He said young people getting involved need to be aware once their accounts were used as mule accounts, it left an easily discoverable trail. This could lead to prosecution, with the risk of imprisonment, and even being placed on a terrorist watch list. <\/p>\n The Black Axe gang has come to dominate the cyber-enabled crime space in Ireland. It originally began in Nigeria but has an active cell in Ireland, with a five-tier structure. <\/p>\n That includes recruiters, who focus exclusively on convincing people to allow their accounts to be used for transactions. Students are often approached on campuses, or at parties, on the promise of a fee.<\/p>\n The Black Axe, the biggest fraud gang in Ireland, is suspected of stealing or laundering up to \u20ac100 million since 2020. In 2024 alone, the value of the main cyber-enabled fraud types, committed by a variety of criminals and gangs, reported to the Garda exceeded \u20ac80 million.<\/p>\n Garda\u00ed have arrested close to 700 suspects during investigations into Black Axe activities; over 100 management figures and almost 600 mules.<\/p>\n \u201cThe money mule will usually do one of three things after the money is moved into their account,\u201d said a detective. <\/p>\n \u201cThe mule will withdraw it in cash, or the criminal withdraws it in cash if they have the mule\u2019s bank card. The mule can also transfer the money into another account. Then the third option is buying high value goods with the money, which are then handed over to the criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, more recently, a fourth money mule action had been detected; the transferring of the stolen funds into cryptocurrency. The Black Axe\u2019s operations have been so extensive, the network of mule accounts used so vast, it is a key reason for the increase in money laundering crimes recorded by the Garda in recent years.<\/p>\n A total of 27 Black Axe members have been prosecuted for gangland offences, meaning they had management roles in the gang. The Garda\u2019s Operation Skein, focused on the Black Axe gang, is led by Cryan of the GNECB.<\/p>\n Last month, Ejike Francis Ogubefi (42), Clonard Road, Crumlin, Dublin 12 and Steven Silvester (32), The Paddocks, Morristown, Newbridge, Co Kildare, became the first Black Axe senior managers convicted for directing organised crime. They were also convicted of money laundering, after being linked to \u20ac6 million in stolen and laundered money, and jailed for nine and seven years.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Inside the Black Axe raid: What garda\u00ed found in operation targeting global crime gangOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n While about 1,500 money mules linked to the Black Axe gang have been identified in Ireland, garda\u00ed believe the true number is more likely above 10,000, maybe well above. And garda\u00ed are now seeing Black Axe tactics seeping into other crime types.<\/p>\n \u201cThe money mules are not just being used for the cyber-enabled crimes, we\u2019re seeing it in drugs crime now,\u201d said a source of street-level dealers selling to drug users. \u201cThese guys won\u2019t take cash off you. They\u2019ll tell you to Revolut the money to an account. But it\u2019ll be an account in someone else\u2019s name that they have control over. <\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t want to be handling cash because if they\u2019re caught by the guards, a few grand in cash in their pockets would be taken off them. And they don\u2019t want it going through their own accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/3V6HAFYIW5A3LC5EA2LJ75DNP4.jpg\")
The Criminal Assets Bureau with the assistance of Garda teams conducting a search operation in March 2019. Photograph: Cab\/Facebook <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/EXEFUSAK3BEAXBSG6WTMGHEJZE.jpg\")
The Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) with the assistance of Garda teams conducting a search operation on the Limerick garage in March 2019. Photograph: Cab\/Facebook <\/p>\n![\"Stephen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/U6TVQVTW2ZT35AKXDDKOMAQ2GE.jpg\")
Stephen O’Sullivan was charged with paying a Garda member \u20ac20,000 for information about the Cab\u2019s investigation into his business. But in February, the case collapsed in court. Photograph: Collins Courts <\/p>\n![\"Cash](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/NADFWEE2ZFF4TKDMNWWSPDFT3Q.jpeg\")
Cash seized during searches across Dublin and Meath by the Criminal Assets Bureau. Photograph: Cab\/Facebook <\/p>\n![\"Garda](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/MNOZIXXAKZO5XJLXCND6NWSAZI.JPG\")
Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly says the rise in money laundering in Ireland is ‘obviously concerning’. Photograph: Stephen Collins\/Collins Photos <\/p>\n![\"Gardaí](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/4OI6ER52WJHBNHN5AUZHRHUBX4.jpg\")
Garda\u00ed recovered a number of clothing items which are believed to denote affiliation, rank and loyalty in the Black Axe organized crime group. Photograph: An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na <\/p>\n