Bureau preparing to seize €6.6m in criminal assets

THE Criminal Assets Bureau is preparing to seize €6m worth of cash and properties in the new year. The agency - made up of garda, revenue and social welfare experts - last week got the keys to property worth €5m belonging to a major cigarette smuggler.

The handover of the Dublin city centre premises by Noel Duggan to CAB officers was in a bid to pay off a tax assessment by CAB of up to €6m.

Now CAB investigators are ready to pounce on 1m stashed in a special savings account belonging to a jailed paramilitary and suspected smuggler. Convicted Real IRA man Liam Campbell is understood to have lodged €500,000 in a bank in Dundalk, Co Louth, in a single transaction under a false name in 1998.