Gardaí want charges brought against ‘The Family’ drug gang
Gardaí have been assembling their file for the DPP since details emerged in 2024 of a major international operation involving the interception of the 'Ghost' encrypted communication system. Picture: iStock
Gardaí have sent a file to the DPP seeking charges against the leaders of Ireland’s number one drug-trafficking network.
It is understood that gardaí are recommending charges of directing and participating in a criminal organisation against bosses of the long-established gang known as The Family.
Gardaí have spent more than a year working on the file since details emerged in September 2024 of a major international operation involving the interception of an encrypted communication system, known as Ghost.
The system was used by powerful drug networks across the globe, including The Family in Ireland.
The DPP is expected to spend a considerable amount of time examining the file, not least as key evidence is based on private messages intercepted by foreign police agencies.
The State prosecutor will have to assess if this evidence will be accepted by Irish courts, with the possibility of legal challenges if they give the green light for prosecutions.
The Family has been a top target of Garda Organised and Serious Crime and the Criminal Assets Bureau for decades, more recently becoming the target of the Revenue Commissioners.
The network has been hit repeatedly/url] by the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, including a succession of major hauls and arrests of top lieutenants and logistics bosses this year.
This includes the haul of 104kg of cocaine in Wexford and Dublin a week ago, along with the confiscation of 116kg of cocaine in Co Laois last October.
The previously reported that The Family is estimated to traffic at least 100kg of cocaine into Ireland every two months.
The network supplies groups across the island of Ireland.
At the time of the Ghost operation, the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, which is attached to the Organised and Serious Crime Unit, identified The Family as the biggest drug network in the country — a mantle it assumed from the damaged Kinahan crime cartel.
This network, based around four brothers from Ballyfermot, West Dublin, is one of the longest-running organised crime groups in the country.
It boasts international connections, across Europe, South and Central America, and Asia.
The Family has been in operation for more than 20 years.
It initially specialised in the heroin trade, before branching out into the booming cocaine trade, and then the cannabis market.
It is understood that the Garda file is based on substantial work across multiple jurisdictions and that the final file is substantial in size.
Because of its complexity, it is expected to take officials in the DPP considerable time to examine it.
They could revert back to gardaí, asking for further inquiries to be undertaken.
The international Ghost investigation was co-ordinated by Europol, the EU police agency, as well as US and Australian police.
It began after French police infiltrated the Ghost network and two of its servers, and shared its intelligence with Europol.
It showed that Australia and Ireland were the two countries with the greatest use of the system, with around 400 devices detected in Australia and some 100 in Ireland.
Analysts were able to watch live messages on the system, including messages of crime bosses organising drug shipments, murders, and “industrial scale” money laundering.
In the arrest operation last September, a total of 51 people were detained in four countries — 38 in Australia, and 11 in Ireland.
A total of 42 Ghost phones were seized as part of the operation, as well as 150 other mobile phones, 200 sim cards, and two cryptocurrency keys.
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