I thought perhaps I should post this article to you. It has information in it I've never read before--pretty amazing.
IRA moves to a different kind of boom
The terrorist group has branched out to become a successful crime business, write Sean O'Neill and David Lister in London
26feb05
BOBBY Storey is revered by his IRA comrades. The legend of the organisation's director of intelligence is built on an ability to avoid anti-terrorist surveillance.
But the end of organised sectarian violence in Northern Ireland has forced Storey to redirect his skills. According to Britain's Special Branch, Storey is now the head of the IRA "elite robbery team" and regarded as the man most likely to have organised the pound stg. 26.5 million ($64.6million) heist from the National Australia Bank-owned Northern Bank.
Storey has helped make the IRA one of Europe's largest and richest organised crime gangs, with an estimated annual income of up to pound stg. 200million, according to security sources.
While observing a ceasefire for more than 10 years, the organisation has transformed itself from a ruthless terrorist group into a sophisticated crime syndicate.
It has established links with other criminal gangs in Britain and eastern Europe and is heavily involved in counterfeiting, smuggling and international money-laundering as well as major robberies.
The organisation makes money from cigarette smuggling, cross-border fuel-laundering -- referred to as "red-diesel republicanism" -- and the manufacture of high-quality spirits, sometimes called "green-label" Smirnoff.
Criminologists use the term "IRA plc" to describe the fact the organisation is now run as an international business. The IRA has never been a stranger to what people in Northern Ireland used to refer to as "ordinary decent crime". Robbery, smuggling and racketeering on both sides of the border generated the income necessary to fund the purchase of weapons and explosives and provide for prisoners' families.
But while protection rackets have been largely abandoned because they upset the communities on which the IRA depends, criminal activities have become more innovative and diverse since the 1994 ceasefire.
One security source said: "You end up with a grudging admiration for them. They have the ability, the patience and the intelligence to perpetrate very clever crimes.
"They will engage in anything they can make a penny profit on and the millions are channelled through the central finance department, which is run by very astute, very able people who know how the business world works."
Under Storey's management, for example, the IRA's robbery squad has developed a tactic known as "tiger kidnapping", where the family of an employee is held hostage to ensure his or her co-operation. Since last April, there have been 11 "tiger kidnappings", at least four of which have been blamed on the IRA.
In a raid on a convenience store outside Belfast last May, four staff were held at gunpoint. Cigarettes, alcohol and electrical items worth more than pound stg. 1million were stolen.
In October, the IRA stole cigarettes worth pound stg. 2million from a warehouse in North Belfast. Over the past two years, it has stolen cigarettes worth nearly pound stg. 4million from trucks passing through South Armagh.
In the Irish Republic, smaller-scale robberies of security vans and post offices have been used to train recruits.
Bill Tupman of Exeter University, who invented the term IRA plc, said: "To persist, paramilitaries need continued access to money. These organisations are as much para-businesses as they are paramilitaries."
Tupman estimated the IRA's annual income in 1998 at pound stg. 20million. Today, sources place it anywhere between pound stg. 40million and pound stg. 200million.
The authorities long ago recognised the criminal threat posed by the refusal of Ulster's terror groups to disband. But it has been politically expedient to turn a blind eye to keep the peace process on track. Northern Ireland has its own Organised Crime Task Force and Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) but many sources admit their investigative techniques lag behind the criminals.
The IRA is no longer made up of volunteers dedicated to the "armed struggle" for a united Ireland but by criminals with their own specialties.
Alan McQuillan, head of the ARA, said the republicans' criminal talents were much more sophisticated than those of loyalist gangs.
"The loyalists are generally very much at the hard end -- drugs, extortion, local armed robberies, prostitution," he said. "Republicans have moved much more towards excise and revenue-type activities and a few big robberies."
But criminal activity is starting to cost the IRA support in its heartland and could spell political disaster for Sinn Fein and its leader, Gerry Adams.
Idealistic republicans fear their "army" has been infiltrated by those with no interest in the political project.
One said: "After the ceasefire a lot of the men and women who fought the war walked away. But people have continued to join; you have to ask why. The war is over, what are these people going to do except rob banks and smuggle diesel?"
theaustralian.news.com.au |
