Gangster (13 page)

‘We brought in as many units as possible,’ said Carty. ‘It wasn’t just the sole domain of one unit. Special Branch got involved because they’re good at generating criminal intelligence. They had people active in that area, so they came on board. Then we got gardaí from the Louth/Meath division and Naas because Jessbrook lies on the border, and officers from Store Street because they were dealing with Meehan, and he obviously played a big part in Gilligan’s operation. Basically we got as many people as we could involved.’

There was a strange face in the room. Carty introduced him as Higher Officer Finbar O’Leary from the Customs National Drugs Team on behalf of the Revenue Commissioners. Carty outlined his plan. He believed it was pointless trying to secure a drug conviction against Gilligan. ‘The problem we had was that he didn’t physically touch his product, therefore we were looking at a conspiracy or money laundering charge. So we concentrated our efforts on that.’

Carty spoke in no uncertain terms. Gilligan, he said, was the biggest criminal in Ireland. He made Martin Cahill and anyone else who went before him look like a boy scout. He said the incident room for the investigation would be open at any time to anyone involved. He wanted the entire squad to act in co-ordination. ‘Basically I wanted to make his life hell in every way possible, come at him from all sides,’ he recalled.

If nothing else, this would make Gilligan acutely aware that he couldn’t bully or intimidate the State, that for his actions he would learn there would be a measured reaction from the State. When the conference ended, someone asked what the operation was called. Carty looked quizzically at McNally. One of the special branch delegation interjected. ‘What about Operation Pineapple?’

From what he had heard so far, the officer reached the conclusion that looking at Gilligan’s organisation was like looking at the layers of a pineapple. It was a curious comparison, but one they understood.

If Carty didn’t know much about Gilligan on that day, he soon did. His suspicion that Gilligan couldn’t possibly be declaring his wealth to the Revenue Commissioners was on target. Not only was he not paying tax, but he had his own peculiar way of returning his tax remits. One sent to him for the tax year ending 1994 seeking his predicted earnings was sent back with a personal note scrawled in red crayon on the letter. It read: ‘I’m just out of prison, I have no fucking money for you, leave me alone.’

Towards the end of April, the team had built up a comprehensive picture of their target. Carol Rooney’s relationship with Gilligan was of particular interest although she was barely out of school. Carty continued approaching other State agencies looking for help. Officials from Kildare County Council were asked to assist.

‘Gilligan had no planning for Jessbrook. There had been huge intimidation of council officials after he illegally put ramps on the road, so we invited all the different agencies that had competency in this area, so we could make life as difficult for him as possible,’ he said.

The thrust of the inquiry focused on the cash Gilligan was shifting through unsuspecting bookmakers. The team approached the large book-making firms who reported how much money he had gambled. In his career, Carty had dealt with serious crime, but was aghast at the wealth Gilligan was collecting.

‘I had dealt with subversives and the like, so nothing shocked me. But I was a bit taken aback with the sheer scale of his operation. We had intelligence that he was bringing huge amounts of hash into the country, so we knew he had to be making serious money. But I don’t think anyone thought it was that big.’

The Garda team started approaching locals who lived near Jessbrook. Gilligan, contrary to what Geraldine would have you believe, was despised by their neighbours. He bullied his way around and shouted and screamed at people who crossed him. One neighbour whom Gilligan wanted to buy land from was beaten up when he refused—Gilligan urinated on his face. Another who needed Gilligan’s permission to use part of his land to supply water to his home was refused. He was hated in the rural community.

An essential part of the investigation was keeping Bowden and virtually all of Gilligan’s associates under surveillance. Rooney and Geraldine, the latter blissfully unaware of the former, were also tailed.

Slowly the team began to put the jigsaw together. The incident room would remain open till midnight each night, busy with people filing reports. ‘We worked 12 hours a day on the case, 24 hours some days, as late as necessary,’ said Carty.

In the first weeks of the inquiry, Carty had made sure the Customs National Drugs Team (CNDT) was involved in the decision-making. The CNDT assumed responsibility for tracking the movements of Gilligan and his associates through Dublin Airport, vehicles flagged to the gang and the ferry terminals. Brendan ‘Speedy’ Fegan was identified dropping off Meehan at Dublin Airport to catch one of his many flights abroad. Pineapple soon outlined the nucleus of people associated with Gilligan. Carty asked Special Branch for a report on Gilligan’s links with the INLA, who were beginning to feature in the inquiry. Twelve of their number found themselves implicated. Information from taps on their phones confirmed the INLA was handling hashish worth IR£10,000 a week, as well as carrying out shootings on Gilligan’s behalf.

Every one of the team was aware of Gilligan’s connection to Traynor, and the charges relating to the Guerin assault. Carty knew the journalist personally—the two were Manchester United fans. Midway through the inquiry, he warned her to be careful. Gilligan, he said, was dangerous, perhaps more so than anyone imagined. ‘I think she thought of it as just intimidation on Gilligan’s behalf. She would say, “What else would you expect of John Gilligan?”’

Gradually, Carty came to understand that Gilligan was a fool, but a dangerous one. Reading report after report on everything about his life, he gained an in-sight into Operation Pineapple’s target. ‘He was a fella who achieved what he should never have achieved,’ he later reflected. ‘If he was anything, he was a two-bit handbag snatcher from Ballyfermot, who started out doing the dirty work, then started paying others to do it when he got the money. Gilligan was no criminal mastermind, just the right fella in the right place at the right time.’

Even before linking Baltus and Djorai to Gilligan, the Dutch MOT were convinced they had uncovered a serious money laundering operation. If they had needed confirmation of this, it came on 9 May when a criminal investigation team tapped Baltus’s and Rahman’s names into the Dutch national criminal system. By a stroke of good fortune, Baltus had been arrested the day before in a hotel in The Hague collecting an envelope. This envelope had been posted from Dublin and marked for the attention of one Mr Simon Rahman.

When Rahman failed to collect the letter, the hotel’s manager opened the package and found it contained 31 counterfeit US dollar notes. One of the notes was printed on one side only. The rest were of good quality and bore the serial numbers B70161620K and B26466264L. The manager called the police. One detective stayed in the hotel while his colleague took the forged notes away for forensic examination. Back in police headquarters, the detective learned that a similar amount had been seized from Baltus’s son the previous October. Not only that, but Interpol had circulated bulletins on the counterfeit cash. The detective went looking for the bulletin, reference number 12 A20305. Meanwhile back at the hotel, Baltus turned up to collect Rahman’s letter and was promptly arrested.

Forging any currency is a serious offence, but printing US dollars is far more serious because they belong directly to the American government. Once the embassy was alerted to the find, the pressure would mount on the local police to locate those responsible. To be seen to have done everything possible, the detectives asked the hotel to let them know if anyone called about the letter. A day later, the hotel staff received a call from a young woman enquiring about the letter. She rang three times and asked if it had been collected. Each time she got more anxious, demanding to know if anyone had showed up. On the fourth call, she left an Irish phone number. Her name, she said, was Mrs Ollie. The hotel passed the number to the police who in turn contacted Garda headquarters. The phone number was traced back to Carol Rooney.

Ever cautious of his phone calls being tapped, Gilligan had asked his girlfriend to call on his behalf using a friend’s phone. When she failed to find out what was happening, he called the hotel himself. The call was traced. Baltus was arrested pursuant to Article 209 of the Criminal Code, which refers to counterfeiting. Ever willing to cut a deal, he told the investigators he had received his orders from Rahman. He then volunteered Djorai’s name. The police picked him up a short time later. They couldn’t press charges due to lack of evidence.

A week later, after cross-referencing the telephone calls and security footage of Gilligan taken in the casino, the Dutch police were told by their Irish colleagues that ‘Gilligan belongs in the top three criminals in Ireland. He deals in drugs and firearms and maintains contact with subversive groups.’

After a year of chasing the Danish ‘Mr Big’, the Danish serious crime squad decided to involve Europol. The investigation had started on 4 February after the Spanish police seized 1.8 tons of hashish hidden in the roof of a Danish-registered truck. The driver, Rene Thor Andersen, under interrogation had given away the specific details of Mr Big’s role in the haul. Back in Copenhagen, the police didn’t need anyone to tell them it was their suspect. They code-named Mr Big ‘Target 1’. Realising they were chasing an international criminal group, of which Gilligan was a member, they decided to seek assistance from their European counterparts. This was organised through the official channels of Europol, which arranged a meeting to be held in the Swedish Embassy on Thursday, 6 June. In attendance were liaison officers from Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. A UK detective seconded to Brussels to liaise with police there was also present.

The delegates were told that the Danish serious crime squad believed Mr Big was supplying drug traffickers across Europe with hashish and, of late, ecstasy pills. This information, the representative stated, was gleaned from several telephone interceptions. The latest news from the telephone interceptions was of a conversation between Mr Big and an associate, which took place on 30 May. In the conversation, the two discussed the sale of hashish. Mr Big, a rancourous dealer by any standards, bragged that he only dealt in quantities that weighed over one ton. Mr Big then suggested to his associate that he send in a ton from his ‘stock’ in Spain to the Netherlands—from where, in smaller portions, it could be distributed to Denmark. Another associate, Otto, was then mentioned. Telephonic intelligence suggested that he was now running an amphetamine and ecstasy laboratory, located somewhere in Belgium.

Unknown to Mr Big, his every move had been monitored since March. Police tailed him while he travelled to Otto’s home in Lanaken once a month. His mode of transport from Spain to Belgium was his BMW. The only precaution he took was to change the plates as he crossed international borders. Making sense of the long distance travel, the police concluded that Otto was supplying ecstasy to Mr Big, who they suspected was smuggling it back to Spain for sale on the Costa del Sol. Copies of Otto’s photograph were handed to the delegates as they sipped coffee and consumed biscuits. Accompanying the photograph was a document listing his associates. It read: ‘RAHMAN, Simon Atha Hussain, d/o/b: Surinam 09.01.42. The police in Den Haag/Netherlands are having an on-going investigation against RAHMAN because he is suspected of money laundering, drug trafficking and other criminal offences.’ The document gave the code-name for the investigation as Operation Aerial. It continued: ‘RAHMAN has close contact to: GILLIGAN, John, d/o/b: unknown, living in Dublin/IRELAND. The Dutch police suspect RAHMAN to launder huge sums of money for GILLIGAN, and up to now it seems that RAHMAN has changed approximately 14 mill NGL. The Dutch police have also got information about smuggling of boxes from Rahman to Gilligan using trucks. There is nothing certain about the containment of the mentioned boxes.’

Most of the delegates agreed that the sheer scale of Mr Big’s drug-dealing syndicate required the co-operation of possibly several countries. The Danish representative suggested the information exchange in the case, code-named Operation Wedge, should be co-ordinated by the ELO-network in Europol. All agreed. After requesting that Wedge utilise analytical support from Europol Drugs Unit in order to make a better overview of the case, the Danish team made another important suggestion.

‘We should really get Ireland and Spain involved,’ they said. They all left the meeting, agreeing to regroup in Europol headquarters on Tuesday, 18 June, at 11 a.m.

On 10 June, Carty received correspondence from the Irish desk at Europol inviting him to send officers. When he saw Gilligan’s name mentioned, he gave the go-ahead.

Meanwhile, the MOT was working at cross-purposes to Operation Wedge. Like the Danish, it realised that Gilligan and Rahman were part of a larger, nefarious organisation. Linking Rahman, Gilligan or Baltus to drugs was not their function, and they knew well that they would never get enough evidence to press charges. They also deemed the inquiry far too problematic, given that most of the suspects were living in Ireland, outside their own country. They too decided to enlist Europol. On 12 June, John van Wijk, from the MOT, wrote to Robert Tjaikens, an officer in the planning and development section of Europol Drugs Unit, seeking his help in investigating Gilligan. Van Wijk recounted the casino story, how the MOT had learned about Meehan’s links to the drug trade and of course, Gilligan’s role.

‘On the basis of the above information,’ he wrote ‘there are justifiable suspicions that there is a connection among the persons mentioned. Additionally it can be said that in view of the criminal backgrounds of Meehan and Gilligan the amounts of money exchanged were acquired in drugs traffic and/or arms traffic and/or terrorism.’ The MOT, he wrote, suspected that Baltus, Rahman and Djorai were linked to Gilligan. ‘It is important for us to find out whether transactions by the persons mentioned were reported to your institution or whether you possess any other information relevant for the MOT. Trusting I have sufficiently informed you, please keep me informed about the progress you make.’