This article is from page 13 of the 2009-08-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 13 JPG
TWO people arrested in Ennis, as part of an operation involving the Criminal Assets Bureau and gardai, have been released without charge. The arrests were made last Tues- day, aS part of a major operation which involved searches of homes and business premises. Two houses in Ennis and two in Limerick, along with four offices in Limerick, were
searched.
A handgun, along with a substan- tial quantity of paperwork, were also seized during the operation. The gun was seized at a house in Ennis, where one of the people was NU Ko Kole e
The two arrests were made in En- nis. A man in his late 30s and a woman in her 20s were detained at Ennis Garda Station for question- ing, under Section 30 of the Offenc-
es Against the State Act. The wom- an was released later that evening, while the man was detained over- night, before being released the fol- lowing day. One of those arrested is from the Ennis area and the other is from Limerick. Both have strong connections to Limerick.
The raids were carried out under Operation Platinum, which was es- tablished by the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) over a year ago, to
tackle organised crime in Limerick. These searches are part of an op- eration – spearheaded by CAB and also involving gardai – focusing on organised crime in the general Lim- erick area.
Since Operation Platinum was set up, additional specialist support has been provided by the Emergency Response Unit, the Organised Crime Unit, the Computer Crime Inves- tigation Unit, the Garda Technical
Bureau, the Garda Dog Unit and the Garda Air Support Unit.
In May 2008, 150 premises were searched. While most of those were in Limerick, some of them were in the surrounding counties and in Dublin.
During those searches, a variety of materials was seized. It includ- ed a car, motorcycle, more than €100,000 in cash, drugs, two fire- arms and a quantity of ammunition.