A judge has ordered that cash totalling IR£5,369 (€6,817) seized in 2001 from a convicted Laois drug smuggler at Dublin Airport be forfeited to the State.
Judge Desmond Hogan made the ruling at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court against Gerard Haugh (35), Hawthorn Drive, Portlaoise, Co Laois, and originally from Mullingar.
Affidavits read out in court stated that Haugh was stopped by Customs and Excise officers after he got off a flight from Amsterdam with another man on March 2nd, 2001. They found he was carrying cash including Irish punts, US dollars and Dutch guilders.
Mr Justin Dillon, for the State, said that on the same day, Dutch police seized a pallet of welding products at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam addressed to Haugh in Ireland.
They found four cardboard boxes with 17½ kg of a paste used to make ecstasy, 60,000 ecstasy tablets and a firearm.
Gardaí later searched the Another World Trading Company shop in Portlaoise, which was in Haugh's name, and found a further substantial quantity of ecstasy.
Haugh was later charged with possession of the drugs for sale or supply but failed to turn up for his trial in September 2002. A bench warrant was issued for his arrest.
He had also been stopped by English customs officials at Waterloo Station in London in January 2002. He showed them a false passport bearing the name "Nigel Horton", and said he had just travelled from Amsterdam, where he had been working as a builder for the previous three weeks. Mr Dillon said that when they searched his bags they found a paste that he confirmed was "speed", as well as ½kg of cocaine and 1,000 ecstasy tablets.
He told them his real passport was with the gardaí in Ireland as a condition of his bail.
Haugh was jailed in December 2002 at Middlesex Crown Court in England for a total of five years: 54 months for importing the drugs and a consecutive six months for having a false passport.
Cash totalling Ir£17,330 (€22,000) was previously declared forfeit to the State at a hearing on February 23rd, 2003, after Judge Hogan was told was owned "by a midlands drug dealer, Gerard Haugh, who is presently jailed in England for having 500g of cocaine and 1,000 'E' tablets which he planned to import into Ireland".
The court had heard then that the cash was taken from Catherine Anderson (46), formerly of Ardan Glas, Portlaoise, who told customs officials at Dublin Airport the money was her savings which she didn't want to leave behind her.
Mr Dillon told Judge Hogan at that hearing that Anderson had photographs of Haugh when stopped at the airport and that she also pleaded guilty in England on December 17th, 2001, to conspiracy to obtaining 29 false passports.
Mr Dillon said Anderson had confirmed through her lawyers that she didn't want anything more to do with the money and didn't object to the Revenue application.
Anderson was in charge of the Another World Trading Company shop when gardaí raided it on April 25th, 2001, and she denied any connection with the drugs found there.
Mr Dillon told Judge Hogan that it was on the basis of the facts outlined in the affidavits that the State was contending that the money Haugh had with him at Dublin Airport on March 2nd, 2001, was either the proceeds of drug trafficking or to be used for that purpose.
Judge Hogan said he would make the "appropriate order" in that regard after Mr Shane Costello, for Haugh, said he had no response to the case.