The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) () is a law enforcement agency in Ireland. The CAB was established with powers to focus on the illegally acquired assets of criminals involved in serious crime. The aims of the CAB are to identify the criminally acquired assets of persons and to take the appropriate action to deny such people these assets. This action is taken particularly through the application of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996. The CAB was established as a body corporate with perpetual succession in 1996 and is founded on the multi-agency concept, drawing together law enforcement officers, tax officials, social welfare officials as well as other specialist officers including legal officers, forensic analysts and financial analysts. This multi-agency concept is regarded by some as the model for other European jurisdictions.
The CAB is not a division of the (police) but rather an independent body corporate although it has many of the powers normally given to the . The Chief Bureau Officer is drawn from a member of the holding the rank of Chief Superintendent and is appointed by the Garda Commissioner. The remaining staff of the CAB are appointed by the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. CAB members retain their original powers as if they were working within their separate entities and have direct access to information and databases that their original organisations are allowed by law. This ability to share information was described by the Garda Síochána Inspectorate in its Crime Investigation Report of October 2014 as "a good model that could be replicated outside of CAB".
The CAB reports annually to the Minister through the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána and this report is laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas. The Minister for Justice, in publishing the 2011 CAB Annual Report, stated: "The work of the bureau is one of the key law enforcement responses to tackling crime and the Government is very much committed to further strengthening the powers of the bureau through forthcoming legislative proposals." In publishing the Bureau's 2012 report the Minister for Justice set out: "The Annual Report provides an insight into the workings of the Bureau and highlights the advantage of adopting a multi-agency and multi-disciplinary approach to the targeting of illicit assets. The Bureau is an essential component in the State’s law enforcement response to serious and organised crime and the Government is fully committed to further strengthening its powers through future legislative reform."
The Minister for Justice set out that Ireland, through the work of the Bureau, has established itself as a jurisdiction that is responding to that challenge and the work of the Bureau is internationally recognised as a best practice approach to tackling criminality and the illicit monies it generates.
The CAB has been effective against organised criminals, especially those involved in the importation and distribution of drugs. It has also been used against corrupt public officials and terrorists.
Legislative framework The Law Reform Commission provides consolidated legislation relating to the Bureau, namely: Criminal Assets Bureau Act 1996 (updated to 28 May 2019) Proceeds of Crime Act 1996 (updated to 30 July 2018)
The Proceeds of Crime Acts were amended further by the Proceeds of Crime (Amendment) Act 2016. The Proceeds of Crime (Amendment) Act 2016 is designed to facilitate the seizure of property which is suspected to be the proceeds of crime by expanding the powers of the Criminal Assets Bureau to seize those proceeds. This act amends the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996 in two key respects. First, it allows the Criminal Assets Bureau to seize property which it suspects to be the proceeds of crime for up to 21 days. Second, it reduces the threshold value of property which can be pursued by the Criminal Assets Bureau from €13,000 to €5,000.
Objectives The statutory objectives of the CAB are – the identification of the assets of persons which derive, or are suspected to derive, directly or indirectly from criminal conduct; the taking of appropriate action under the law to deprive or to deny those persons of such assets or the benefit of such assets, and the pursuit of any necessary investigation or other preparatory work in relation to relevant proceedings.
The emergence of CAB signalled a more focused approach on targeting the financial proceeds of crime than previously existed.
Overview The CAB collected €89 million in taxes in its first ten years of existence and it also engaged in initiatives to curtail international criminality. The CAB has a staff of 91, including members of , Revenue Commissioners, (both customs and taxes officers), and civil servants from the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. Its annual budget for 2011 was €6.673 million, of which 86% is salary cost. This was reduced to €6.410 million in 2012, but has increased to 8.832m Euro in 2018.
Budget The budget of the Bureau over the period 2008 to 2021 was as follows:
Officers and staff Officers and staff of the CAB (with the exception of members of the and the Bureau Legal Officer) are protected with statutory anonymity. This anonymity, whilst causing some concerns, has been recognised an important practical issue for all countries when faced with action against people who may be involved in violent crime and extortion and recognises that although police and customs officers are usually trained to deal with such threats and to expect them, revenue and social security officials do not reasonably expect to have to deal with such risks when they take a job.
A number of people have been convicted for threatening CAB officers:
Christopher Pratt was sentenced in 2013 to three years in prison for threatening to "take the head off" a CAB officer. Paschal Kelly was sentenced in 2015 to four-and-a-half years in prison for threatening a CAB officer, tax evasion and serious driving offences, and more recently in February 2019 was sentenced to 18 years in prison following a conviction for a "tiger kidnapping".
Fachtna Murphy was the first Chief Bureau Officer and Barry Galvin was the first Bureau Legal Officer. The current Chief Bureau Officer is Detective Chief Superintendent Michael Gubbins (who succeeded Pat Clavin) and the current Bureau Legal Officer is Kevin McMeel. The former Bureau Legal Officer was Declan O'Reilly. The Bureau Legal Officer is appointed following a recruitment campaign run by the Public Appointments Service.
Background The Criminal Assets Bureau was established on 15 October 1996 by the Minister for Justice, Nora Owen. The CAB was established to deal with increasing levels of serious organised crime in Ireland, most notable being the murders of crime reporter Veronica Guerin and Detective Garda Jerry McCabe.
The CAB was set up by the Oireachtas as a body corporate primarily for the purpose of ensuring that persons should not benefit from any assets acquired by them from any criminal activity. It was given power to take all necessary actions in relation to seizing and securing assets derived from criminal activity, certain powers to ensure that the proceeds of such activity are subject to tax, and also in relation to the Social Welfare Acts. However, as the High Court has noted, it is not a prosecuting body nor a police authority but rather it is an investigating authority which, having investigated and used its powers of investigation, then applies to the High Court for assistance in enforcing its functions.
Proceeds of crime A novel or radical aspect of the CAB was the use of civil forfeiture to freeze and seize the proceeds of criminal conduct under the Proceeds of Crime Act, 1996. Ireland was one of the first countries to introduce civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture involved a recognition on the part of the State that conventional methods of tackling organised crime were ineffective. Whilst the CAB was perhaps intended to confiscate the assets of drug dealers and those involved in organised crime its powers can extend to all assets that are the result of criminal activity. Even though the CAB focuses on serious and organised crime, it has increasingly moved against low- and medium-level offenders who may present as poor role models within their communities, albeit that these cases often cost more to bring than they return financially. The CAB has been distinguished from other agencies who tackle serious organised crime in Ireland in that those agencies may be typified as being reactive whereas the CAB is proactive; a fact which may be considered as representing a significant development in crime control. Whilst novel to Ireland, the concept of forfeiture in the absence of a criminal conviction has a long ancestry, with roots in ancient Rome and evidence of its lineage in the Old Testament. It has long been an important feature of the jurisprudence of the US and has recently been adopted in other common law jurisdictions, including the UK and the Cayman Islands, in their proceeds of crime legislation.
In 2005, the CAB's powers were amended by Part 3 of the Proceeds of Crime (Amendment) Act 2005. The purpose of this Act was to make further provision in relation to the recovery and disposal of proceeds of crime. This involved amending four different acts as follows: the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996, the Criminal Assets Bureau Act 1996, the Criminal Justice Act 1994, and the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act 2001.
The Act was intended to substantially bolster the powers of the CAB in the continuing battle to target the proceeds of all types of crime and will extend those powers to the proceeds of white-collar crime and corruption. The substantial provisions of the Act extended the proceeds of crime legislation to cover foreign criminality and corrupt enrichment. In addition, there were a number of technical provisions relating to court procedures, search powers and evidence.
Under the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996 and 2005, if the CAB can satisfy the High Court on the balance of probabilities that specified property is the proceeds of crime, the court will make an interim order over the property preventing anybody from dealing with it. This order stays in place for 21 days, following which an application is made for an interlocutory hearing, on notice to any person who has an interest in that property. If it appears to the court that such property is the proceeds of crime, despite anything said by any respondent, an interlocutory order is put in place for a period of seven years. In the course of that time any person who can satisfy the court that the property is not the proceeds of crime can move to have the order lifted. If no such order has been granted during those seven years, the CAB can seek a disposal order effectively extinguishing anybody's rights to the properties and transferring it to the central exchequer. In April 2014, Deputy Eamonn Maloney sponsored a private members Bill to amend the Proceeds of Crime Acts. Section 1 of the Bill seeks to reduce the seven-year period to two years. This Bill was listed before the Dáil on Friday 8 May 2015 and is viewed as a move by the Government to toughen the laws on confiscating criminals' assets and similarly is expected to yield a multimillion-euro windfall for the taxpayer. As the Bill is a Private Members' Bill, its referral to Select Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality was required pursuant to the Standing Orders 82A and 118.
In July 2016, the statutory threshold of €13,000 as set out under the Proceeds of Crime Act, 1996 was reduced to €5,000. This was done to facilitate the Bureau in targeting mid-level proceeds of crime.