THE OFFICES of some solicitors were included in a series of raids by gardaí yesterday directed at organised crime in the northwest. The operation included a swoop on an uninhabited island.
A senior Garda source said: "The search for the money on the island was prompted by information that the main gang being targeted buries its money instead of banking it." Members of the Criminal Assets Bureau, which includes Customs officers as well as gardaí, sailed to Church Island about a kilometre offshore on Lough Gill.
They were accompanied by a sniffer dog specially trained in their search for hidden money and drugs.
The island has been uninhabited since the monastery from which it gets its name was burned 600 years ago
The officers were part of group of up to 90 gardaí, including members of the Cab, the emergency response unit and local detectives. They took part in a series of raids yesterday on 14 premises, most of them private houses, in Sligo town.
In the raids, code-named Operation Golf, at least four professional premises were also visited - two solicitors' offices, a financial adviser's offices in Sligo and a solicitor's office in Co Donegal. Computers and large files of documents were seized and taken away for examination.
Heavily armed members of the emergency response unit led the raids on many of nine private houses that were targeted.
Gardaí had to forcibly remove the door of one house, the home of the suspect at the centre of the operation.
He is suspected to be linked to at least two of four unsolved murders in the town in recent years, and of heading one of the northwest's biggest cocaine operations.
His house, one adjoining it which he also owns and an unoccupied building on the other side were searched, as was a shed in his garden specially fitted out as a state-of-the art private bar.
No arrests were made in the raids which began at 7am but a boat, a lorry, a van and a number of other vehicles were seized.
A Garda spokesman said: "Operation Golf is a target-driven operation against those engaged in organised and serious crime in the northwest region, centred around Sligo town.
"The operation has been ongoing for some time and is very much a 'live' operation. For that reason, and the likelihood of further Garda activity within the operation, no further details can be released at this time."