Former IRA man owes CAB €500,000

A former IRA member arrested with his wife by Spanish police investigating a multi-million smuggling and money laundering operation is currently repaying close to €500,000 to the Criminal Assets Bureau here.

Leonard Hardy and his wife Donna, also a former IRA member, were detained along with five others by an elite Spanish unit during which 11 properties, worth over €5.5m, were confiscated and 90 bank accounts frozen.

Spanish authorities have estimated in the region of €10.5m had been laundered by the network, which is suspected of being engaged in cigarette smuggling and illicit alcohol sales.

The swoop, conducted on December 29, involved cooperation and intelligence sharing with both the Garda Síochána and British police.

Mr Hardy, 53, is currently paying off a tax settlement with the CAB, believed to be valued at close to €500,000. The CAB assessment is based on his earnings from cigarette smuggling.

This followed a criminal conviction last July, in a case taken by CAB, for failing to pay tax returns, valued at €280,000, over a seven-year period.

He lives with his wife, whose maiden name is Donna Maguire, in the townland of Plaster, just outside Dundalk in Co Louth.

Originally from Belfast, Hardy received a six-year sentence in Germany in 2006 after admitting his role in a failed IRA bomb attack on a British army barracks at Osnabruck in August 1989.

He walked free under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement because the offence happened before 1998.

During his tax prosecution at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court last July, his defence said he was “integral” to the Good Friday Agreement and had helped to maintain the agreement through “fragile periods”.

Donna Maguire, 48 and from Newry, received a nine-year sentence in Germany in 1995 in relation to the army barracks attack. She was found guilty of attempted murder and explosive offences.

Mr Hardy received a fine of €10,000 in the circuit court, but there followed a tax assessment from the CAB, upon which he reached a settlement. He is in the process of repaying that bill.

The couple, who have four children, were on a Christmas break when they were arrested in Lanzarote on the Canary Islands. Five more people — including people from Spain, Norway, and Britain and another man from Ireland — were also arrested. A total of 11 searches were made in different parts of the country, including Alicante and Malaga.

Mr Hardy is being held in custody in Madrid with consent to bail of €250,000, while all the others have been released without charge.