The Dublin drugs gang caught up in the latest international policing operation targeting an encrypted messaging platform emerged from impoverished and chaotic beginnings to take a prime position in Ireland’s underworld.
Within its leadership structure are two middle aged brothers who began drug dealing on the streets of west Dublin trading in heroin. However, the group – sometimes referred to as “The Family” by sections of the media – has long diversified into the cocaine trade.
The significant Irish crime group is back in the news after information about its activities emerged when international law enforcement agencies – including the Garda, FBI and European police forces – infiltrated an encrypted messaging platform. The first news of that operation – which appears similar to the EncroChat encrypted platform being hacked four years ago – emerged only this week.
Intelligence gleaned from intercepted messages brought gardaí to a rural farming area of Co Wexford on Monday, where more than 100kg of cocaine, valued at least €8 million, was discovered in a truck.
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The seizure resulted in the arrest of four suspects, with a fifth person detained, in Dublin later on Monday. However, the arrested men are not the prime movers in The Family gang, none of whom appeared to be “hands on” when the drugs were discovered.
The seizure of the drugs, along with a very large sum of cash, was significant as it appears to have revealed a smuggling route the group was using, via commercially owned trucks.
However, though the loss of drugs and money – and apparently a smuggling route – is a blow for the The Family, they have dealt with setbacks before. A leading member of the gang served a lengthy prison sentence in continental Europe when he was caught over a decade ago with suitcases full of cash that was being used in a multi-million euro drug deal.
Another of the group’s leaders was involved in drug deals valued at over €1 million two decades ago and has served time in an Irish prison. The precise details of these past crimes cannot be set out in detail here for legal reasons. One of the gang’s suspected leaders is currently before the courts on serious gang-related charges.
In 2016, when the Kinahan-Hutch feud erupted on the streets of Dublin, the Kinahans’ Dublin-based drugs group came under sustained pressure from the Garda and has since been effectively suppressed. However, The Family gang managed to profit from that situation, taking receipt of major drug deliveries from abroad and selling them to other Irish crime gangs.
Garda sources say they are not in the same league as the Kinahan cartel, though they are a large-scale domestic drug dealing enterprise with international links. Some of the biggest cash and drug seizures in the Republic during the pandemic years were linked to them.
And in a development that confirms their status close to the top of the tree in the domestic underworld, they are a major target for both the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau and the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab). Indeed, Cab has raided a luxury business controlled by the The Family gang, and being used as a front for money laundering, and has already seized some assets from them with further actions anticipated.
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