A prime four-acre site overlooking Lough Derg in Co Clare, which belonged to a British drugs smuggler, David Huck, is under negotiation after it was withdrawn from auction by the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) yesterday.
The site at Ogonelloe, near Killaloe, is close to a house which Huck bought in the early 1990s while he was running drug-smuggling operations from the west of Ireland. The house is also the subject of a CAB court order and will be sold later.
Huck bought the site with the intention, it is believed, of building a lavish lakeside home. Planning permission had been granted but lapsed.
The site was on offer at yesterday's auction in Killaloe with an asking price understood to be around €100,000. It was withdrawn when bidding stopped at €80,000, and the auctioneer is in negotiation with the highest bidder.
CAB is entitled to seek the best possible price for the property, on which the High Court has issued a judgment mortgage.
Huck came to the attention of the Garda in July 1993 when they seized the 65-feet ketch Brime, off Co Cork. On board they found €25 million worth of cannabis. Four men, two Dutch, one from Dublin and another from England, were later jailed.
Huck was arrested in 1997 by the British customs after they intercepted another expensive yacht running drugs into Britain. He was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment in 1997. Recently he was declassified as a category A prisoner and moved from a high-security prison to an open institution in preparation for his release.
Two years ago the CAB was granted a High Court order preventing him from reducing his assets in this State below £475,000 (€603,000)
In August 2000 the Brime was sold by the State for £58,400 (€74,000) and has been converted to a luxury charter yacht.
Meanwhile, the CAB is waiting to sell a penthouse in Dublin's Docklands, cars and other property abandoned by another major English criminal who had based his operations here in the early 1990s.
Micky Green, a major London criminal since the early 1970s, escaped to Spain shortly before he was about to be arrested here in 1996. He abandoned a large bungalow in Co Kildare, the apartment in Dublin as well as Bentley, Mercedes and Porshe cars.
Green, who is in his early 60s, is understood to be still living in the south of Spain. It is believed he has links with a number of former leading Dublin criminals, including two who were part of the gang which murdered journalist Veronica Guerin.
Huck, Green and other British and Dutch drug smugglers used the Republic's relatively unprotected west and south coasts for landing drugs for reshipment by lorry to the British market.