Funds seized from companies linked to associates of Republican Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy by the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) after an investigation into a fuel laundering scheme are the proceeds of crime, the High Court has ruled.
Cab sought the orders after it started an investigation into fuel laundering in 2012 which the judge said “centred on the Murphy family of Hackballscross, Dundalk, Co Louth, and their various associates”.
The following year the bureau obtained seizure orders in respect of monies held in many bank accounts belonging to a dozen companies and individuals it says were involved in fuel laundering.
Orders had previously been made against some of those entities while other parties involved in the investigation previously made settlements with the bureau totalling €775,000,
Ms Justice Carmel Stewart held that property seized from several other corporate entities, most of which have now been dissolved, by the bureau is the proceeds of crime. The property recovered included monies held in frozen bank accounts totalling some €266,000
The judge said she was satisfied to make orders in respect of the property under sections 3 and 7 of the 1996 Proceeds of Crime Act and is now being held for use by the State.
The property in question belonged to firms including Athboy BioFuels Ltd, TCF Fuels Benali Marketing, Save Fuels Ltd, Hibernia Fuels Ltd, Vienna Fuels and Shin Ram Ltd.
‘Criminal activity’
The Cab investigation was linked to their and other company transactions with a firm called Base Garage Supplies Ltd.
The judge said she was satisfied the firms were, along with several others, part of an “overall elaborate fuel laundering scheme” which generated monies that were the proceeds of crime or criminal activity.
Some of these firms she said made large lodgments to Base Garage Supplies, which is now a dissolved company whose directors were Aidan and Patrick Murphy of Hackballscross, without receiving a supply of fuel at all. Some of the transfers made no commercial sense, said the judge.
There were several common threads linking the companies to the fuel laundering. The Internet Protocol addresses used to conduct the banking affairs of supposedly independent firms were registered to addresses owned by the Murphy family
A substantial amount of business documents and records were recovered from the remains of two fires still burning when the bureau searched the Murphy premises in 2013.
The judge said the papers recovered showed “a notable overlap” of directorships of the various companies.
The scheme involved large quantities of marked mineral oil or green diesel being washed changed to white diesel, where it can be passed off as unmarked fuel, which is more expensive.
The process involves the removal of a marker or dye added to green diesel to distinguish it from other fuels.
Diesel laundering
The cost differential between these types of fuel has been exploited by organised criminal elements engaged in diesel laundering for many years and the profits generated from this activity are substantial, said the judge.
The variety of methods used to launder this fuel are hazardous and result in the production of a toxic sludge.
The judge said fuel laundering was a covert operation behind the curtain of legitimate trade where numbered bank accounts are opened in the names of different oil-related businesses.
It involves the selling and invoicing of marked diesel by legitimate oil dealers to purchasing companies. Those firms then sell the marked product to a facilitating entity called a buffering company or missing trader.
These entities, after the green diesel is physically altered, receive large sums of money from the sale of white diesel to parties who sell the washed fuel to motorists.
The missing traders, said the judge, lack documentation to prove they bought white diesel.
When investigations by Revenue are carried out these entities disappear, only to be replaced by similar to takes its place in the chain of command.