‘Ballot box and money laundering don’t mix’

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell yesterday said there was no place for those with “a ballot box in one hand and a money-laundered bank draft in the other”.

Mr McDowell was referring to the IRA robbery of £26 million (€38m) from the Northern Bank in Belfast last December and the subsequent attempts in the Republic to launder the cash.

He told the annual conference of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) in Tralee, Co Kerry, yesterday that Sinn Féin/IRA could not adopt an updated version of their famous dual strategy of a ballot box in one hand and the Armalite in another.