Gardaí believe they will have enough evidence to recommend charges for gangland offences against the leaders of the biggest drug trafficking network in the country.
The development comes after gardaí took part in an international policing operation — spanning nine countries — targeting an encrypted phone network, known as ‘Ghost’, used by “very powerful” crime groups across the globe.
This includes ‘The Family’ crime gang in Ireland, which has been in operation for decades and, gardaí say, has replaced the Kinahan crime cartel as the biggest drug traffickers in the country.
Three brothers, including the top leader of the gang, had their homes in Ballyfermot and Clondalkin in west Dublin searched in a swoop of 27 properties on Monday night and Tuesday morning.
Detectives believe they will have enough evidence to recommend charges of directing or, failing that, facilitating, a criminal organisation — but stress it will be up to the DPP to make the call.
Security sources said the dismantling of the Ghost network has resulted in “total panic” among Irish gangs using similar devices and that there were reports of phones being “dumped”.
Sources said there would be “disruption for a while” and that many criminals will “revert” to old fashioned ways of communicating, including the use of ‘burner’ phones and physical meetings in noisy public places.
Europol, the EU police agency which coordinated the global operation with US and Australian police, said this week’s searches brought to an end “a global game of cat and mouse” over the last three years.
The operation began when French authorities infiltrated the Ghost network and two servers — one in France and one in Iceland. It found that Australia and Ireland were the two countries with the greatest use of the system — with around 400 such devices in Australia and 100 in Ireland.
They shared their intelligence with Europol, which set up an Operational Task Force in March 2022 involving nine countries, including Ireland.
Analysts were able to watch live messages on Ghost, including messages of crime bosses organising drug shipments, ordering murders, and “industrial scale” money laundering.
Europol said there have been 51 arrests in four countries, the vast majority in Australia (38) and Ireland (11).
Five of the arrests in Ireland happened previously, with a further six this week. Some 300 gardaí were involved on Monday and Tuesday, focused on west and south west Dublin as well as Wexford and Wicklow.
The searches were led by the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, supported by local gardaí and specialist units. A total of 42 Ghost encrypted phones were seized along with 150 mobile phones and laptops, 200 SIM cards and two cryptocurrency keys.
Around 100kgs of cocaine was recovered in a hidden compartment of an articulated truck in Co Wexford.
More significantly, gardaí have dismantled a key supply route into the country using a haulage company and taken out a key logistics facilitator used by criminal gangs.
Security sources are relatively confident of recommending charges against the leaders of the gang.
This will be done by “attributing conversations” on the phones to specific people, which will be corroborated by surveillance of the people, their locations, as well as what was said in the messages, including “slip ups”.
Two local drug gangs — one in Wicklow and the other in Dublin’s south city — were also targeted, as well as a third group supplying and operating the phones.
“We will be looking for charges for directing or facilitating,” a security source said, “but it will be up to the DPP to determine if legal standards regarding the use of phone evidence is met.”
Gardaí are, separately, completing files against “very significant players” using evidence from encrypted phones. If the DPP directs prosecutions on these it will improve prospects relating to Ghost evidence.