Hutch to be brought before Spanish courts following arrest

Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch has been detained in Spain as part of an international police investigation into suspected money laundering.

Spanish officials have confirmed Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch has been arrested following reports of an international police operation into money laundering.

They say the 61-year-old head of the Hutch family and a “group of people” held alongside him will be brought before the courts for “crimes allegedly related to drug trafficking and human trafficking".

Gardaí had yesterday confirmed searches in Spain and Ireland targeting a “transnational crime group suspected to be involved in money laundering". 

At least ten searches were conducted in Spain including Lanzarote where Hutch spends much of his time and is believed to have been held although there has been no official confirmation so far he was arrested on the holiday island.

A court in Lanzarote is conducting an ongoing investigation.

A press spokesman for the Canary Islands' High Court of Justice said today: “With regards to the alleged international gang arrested in Lanzarote yesterday, the duty court in the Lanzarote capital Arrecife, which is Court of Investigation Number Two, confirms that searches have been carried out in homes in Lanzarote, on the mainland and in Ireland and that a group of people whose number has not been determined have been arrested.

“Among them are an Irish citizen identified in the international press as The Monk.

“The proceedings are secret and in the next few days they will be brought before the courts for crimes allegedly related to drug trafficking and human trafficking.

“Their judicial status will be made public if approved by the relevant judicial authority when this occurs.” 

Those initial court hearings will be held in private as is normal in Spain. Only trials are held in public.

Several searches are known to have taken place in Lanzarote yesterday from dawn onwards.

Well-placed Spanish sources described it initially as an operation to “neutralise organised crime” but did not say who it was targeting.

Secrecy order

A secrecy order, called a ‘secreto de sumario’ in Spanish, was put on the ongoing probe by a judge in Arrecife who is in charge of the judicialised case. Such orders prevent public officials from making detailed public comment.

They are often placed on criminal probes, especially in their infancy, and prevent even defence lawyers and prosecuting attorneys from accessing case files.

Reports in the Canary Islands say around 50 officers from Tenerife and Aragon in mainland Spain targeted several locations in Arrecife as well as Puerto del Carmen and Playa Blanca.

Three vehicles were said to have been immobilised near the five-star Arrecife Gran Hotel & Spa around 7am yesterday. The number plates on the cars were covered with cardboard with a strip of Civil Guard tape on them. One of the vehicles was a blue BMW and the other a Ford. Many of the raids reportedly took place before dawn.

The Hutch organised crime group has been involved in a feud with the Kinahan organised crime group for the past nine years that has claimed 18 lives.

Gerry Hutch said a few days ago he was considering running as an independent in Ireland’s upcoming general election, in the hope of unseating Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald.

He was acquitted last year, following his arrest in the Costa del Sol resort of Fuengirola and subsequent extraction to Ireland, of organising the Regency Hotel gun attack in Dublin which accelerated the Hutch-Kinahan feud.