Examination of Witness (Questions 20 -
39)
WEDNESDAY 16 JANUARY 2002
ASSISTANT CHIEF
CONSTABLE RAYMOND
WHITE OBE
20. How has it been supported because it was
an expensive operation even to travel and so on and when one bears
in mind also that there are those who have said that since September
11 there has not been the same empathy within the United States
for PIRA, it is amazing how voices have recently been raised very
much there in sympathy with those who have been caught in the
act.
(Mr White) Certainly the financing poses no problems
from the PIRA perspective. You only have to look at the background
of the three individuals there—one totally unemployed—and
ask the question how he could fund five weeks of birdwatching
in Colombia. The money can easily be drawn down. We know from
intelligence that such monies are easily made available to them
and they have the finance to support these people.
21. If things have moved on what are the implications
for Northern Ireland society and for the paramilitary groups themselves
of a greater involvement by paramilitary groups in organised crime?
(Mr White) The philosophy we are pursuing at the moment
is one where we focus on the criminal enterprises. What it means
for the future of Northern Ireland is that if we do not tackle
what we call the legacy of terrorism, in other words, the opportunity
of the organised crime groups to link with the paramilitary groups,
to focus on money raising operations, what you are condemning
the society in Northern Ireland to is a major assault on the legitimate
business side because a lot of the activity they are engaged in
at the moment undermines the capacity of legitimate business to
go ahead. We are well aware in terms of the hydrocarbon fuel activities
where some 120-odd petrol stations have gone out of business where
petrol sales of a legitimate nature which raises money for the
Exchequer have dropped significantly, in the region of 15 or 20
per cent, when in the same period the numbers of vehicles on the
roads of Northern Ireland have risen by 20 per cent, so you can
see immediately the missing assets from the Exchequer. Current
rates there would indicate that something in the region of £600
million loss has been made to the Exchequer, £300 million
of that coming from what you would call the legal importation
of fuel where you and I and anybody else can cross the border
and fill up our vehicle and bring it back, to the fuel laundering
side. That is a massive sum of money going from the Exchequer.
You can roll that over into the tobacco activities as well, where
again cigarettes costing £2 a packet as opposed to £4
are swamping the Northern Ireland market. When you take the other
activities of extortion, when the building trade, retail outlets
in terms of the fast food industry, are hit and where motor dealers
are also very vulnerable, you have almost endemic within the fabric
of Northern Ireland, legitimate business interwoven in partnerships
with criminal organisations. Once you purchase or take your first
load of laundered fuel you are hooked from there on in. There
is no means of you getting out. Once you make a contribution to
a paramilitary organisation you are caught again in that the law
itself can come down on you in having contributed money to an
organisation. In that insidious way, if we do not tackle it in
a very hard and wholesome way, we are condemning the Northern
Ireland business infrastructure to a very substantial uphill struggle
to survive. The other side of it is the ongoing impact on society
itself in that you breed an attitude of mind that certain aspects
of criminality are quite all right. We have suffered somewhat
from that in the past, that to defraud the Government by abstracting
your electric from the lamp-post in the street or slowing down
the meter, it is no big offence, not taxing your car is no big
offence, purchasing illegal telephone cards is no big offence.
You breed an attitude of mind that certain aspects of criminality
are quite acceptable. There is a major battle there for government
as a whole to turn the whole culture and attitude of large parts
of Northern Ireland around because there is an economic benefit
in it. If I live in certain areas of the Province I can get my
cigarettes cheap, I can get my alcohol cheap, and the TV licence
people do not tread too heavily. If I want counterfeit goods so
that my children can wear designer wear, I do not have any real
gripe against the paramilitaries who in a sense can provide a
lot of that, but that gives them as it were insidious control
over those areas in which they live and operate. That is the long
term prognosis that we would see, that if we do not tackle organised
crime/paramilitary activity head on then you really condemn us
to a future that is uncertain in many respects.
22. One is aware that successful businesses
usually grow and what you have been saying is that it is growing
quite well. How then should the Government be tackling it when
it has been not only on the part of citizens an attitude of "If
we can get away with it that is all right"? How far, for
example, has the Government not been prepared to proceed with
prosecutions at times, and I am thinking of the court service,
because of the amount of money that it would cost to proceed with
no guarantee of a judgement in the end? How far is it a fact that
even the security services, the police and others, in seeking
to apprehend such people when regularly they have been let down
by the prosecution service?
(Mr White) Certainly prosecution of major fraud is
very expensive. I am not conscious of any offences where we have
actually turned away. In addressing the problem we are pursuing
two strategies, one of prosecution where prosecution we feel is
warranted, and one of disruption, of inhibiting supply. You may
not finish up with the individuals before the court but you are
actually taking the profits out of their pockets. That has been
the sort of strategy we have been pursuing with HM Customs and
Excise.
23. But is it true on the drugs scene that people
who were brought before the courts were allowed out on bail? I
am thinking of the famous case at Cork, and then Donegal, and
the situation pertaining in Ballymena where people were allowed
out to raise more money to pay their fines when they came before
the courts?
(Mr White) You face an attitude in which Her Majesty's
Government has struck in terms of sentencing where, if there is
no violence associated with the crime, then quite often, if it
is deemed to be a victimless crime in that sense, the capacity
to keep people in custody on remand or to seek what you would
call a substantive custodial sentence does not sit too comfortably
with the general policy that if there is no violence associated
with the offence then non-custodial ways of dealing with the individual
as an offender are taken as opposed to putting them behind bars.
We try to get the message home to the judiciary and to the magistrates,
especially on the dealership aspects of drugs, that sentencing
should be the norm there. I must say that when that message has
been delivered to the judiciary, sentencing practice and practice
notes have gone out from the senior judiciary to the magistrates
and to others to make sure that they do not slip into the business
of treating those offences with non-custodial sentences. We could
certainly argue for longer sentences in relation to those that
are put before the courts in relation to extortion where the offences
by and large are more serious and up until recently the most severe
sentence there has only amounted to five years where in fact 14
years is the maximum, the average being about 35 months. Those
offences by and large are carried out by the paramilitaries themselves
directly. Our problem there is that we charge under section 20
of the Theft Act which is a 1969 Act, which almost pre-dates the
troubles, and whilst we can under section 15 of the Terrorism
Act 2000 put a charge in relation to raising funds on behalf of
a paramilitary group, it is not a charge that sits there too easily
in that proving quite often that it is for a paramilitary group,
is a hurdle we cannot cross, but we can get the individual under
section 20 of the Theft Act for blackmail or raising money with
menaces. Our problem is that no money quite often is handed over
at the point in time when the arrest is made because the menaces
alone is sufficient to substantiate the charge. Therefore it does
not trigger the Proceeds of Crime Act, so quite often we cannot
pick their pocket to some degree in processing. There are anomalies
within the law that certainly we would welcome working with the
Committee in trying to bringing them more into line.
The Reverend Martin Smyth: It would be helpful
if sometime the Committee might be given any suggestions that
you feel would strengthen this as we analyse and report.
Mr Tynan
24. Obviously the types of crime in a paramilitary
organisation are involved in. Is crime in Northern Ireland so
much higher than on the mainland because of the paramilitary organisations?
If the paramilitary organisations did not exist would the ordinary
criminal then take up the likes of supplying cigarettes without
paying duty to the community? How would you see that situation?
(Mr White) Thankfully, in Northern Ireland overall
crime levels are still substantially below the UK mainland here.
In fact, I think we weigh in at the very bottom of the European
chart, but it is the undue influence of the nature of the crimes
that are there. If paramilitary involvement is perceived as evident
in any of the offences, the ability to get witnesses almost disappears
in that people just roll over quite often and they do not see
the offence happening, or perceive that, "If I do go to court
or give evidence then I am a witness today and a victim tomorrow".
Quite often this is the dilemma we face between the detection
of offences and prosecution. One of the hidden measurements that
probably does not make it into the public arena is the number
of offences that are withdrawn because the complainant declines
to proceed, which means that you cannot take the case on through
the courts. That has been a steadily rising figure over the years
which means that we are putting less and less of the key people
before the courts. In those cases where we have jury trials permitted,
for instance, we have had one case where five juries were summoned
to hear the one case. Each jury was got at in the process. Consequently
we are still very heavily dependent on the Diplock court system.
Obviously there are pressures on in terms of the normalisation
process, to as it were schedule out offences where they have not
got what you would call an overtly paramilitary link to them.
We may know that they are paramilitary personalities but if the
crime itself does not speak of being one of those that the paramilitaries
have a hand in, the likelihood then is that it will be certified
out and will go to jury trial. We are on a bit of a learning curve
there in relation to how we get individuals before the court,
and how we strengthen the witness protection scheme that we need
to have in place. The big question for the future obviously will
be when can we fully return to a jury trial system and when can
we convince the public at large to co-operate with the state.
In terms of the police it will be when we can afford the protection
that the people need because perception quite often is as big
a problem for us as the reality of who actually is engaged in
the crime. In that sense we have serious difficulties. If you
took the paramilitaries out of it certainly there is an element
of the vacuum that will be filled by the organised criminal. The
problem with the paramilitaries is that they are now applying
the modus operandi that they have perfected over 20-25
years to ordinary criminal operations, so they are fairly slick
in how they get the business done. They are well aware of the
forensic aspects, they are well aware of the witness aspects.
In that sense the very name or even the impression that it is
a paramilitary group can silence anyone that might otherwise have
chosen to take a stance against them. That comes across very much
again on the extortion side where we lose a lot of cases in terms
of people not reporting them in the first place. We only hear
of about ten per cent of what is affecting the Province. We lose
a lot of cases between reporting and appearance in court because
the victim makes a choice of not choosing to go ahead with the
prosecution or claiming that there has been no further contact
from the extortioner. If you look at each offence, it just depends
on the overt nature of the paramilitary involvement in it, as
to how successful or otherwise we are on the prosecution side.
25. So the crimes themselves, what are the most
lucrative crimes for the paramilitary?
(Mr White) At the moment you could look at three:
tobacco smuggling, hydrocarbon fuels and counterfeit goods.
26. You mentioned the fact that in some businesses
large transactions take place which could be £100,000 and
if they want the readies they can get them very quickly. Obviously
there must be bankers or accountants or other financial institutions
who must be aware of these large transactions. Under those circumstances
could not those be identified as regards the amount of money in
that kind of circumstance?
(Mr White) No. We have searched for many years looking
for their footprint in the financial institutes. We do get a fairly
healthy return on disclosures where financial institutions, banks
or others are required to declare suspicious transactions. That
results in an element of prosecution but very few of those identify
what you would call paramilitary monies. They are still one step
ahead of us in the sense that the money is outsourced to legitimate
businesses, so rather than walking in through the bank door they
are walking in through the pub at the side or the launderette
or into the businesses premises of somebody and money is deposited
there. It can be put into the individual's personal account, it
can go into the company account. It just sits there in sums of
money and they can draw down or hide it as part of the profits
of that business for the year, so it is tremendously difficult
financially to detect but we do, where we think we have a chance
employ forensic accountants, at substantial cost, to try and get
at these deposits. I must say it is without tremendous success.
The biggest success we have had has been when we have gone after
them en bloc when we did a big operation a month ago with
Customs and Excise and we have nine people there of a substantial
nature with assets running into several million pounds that we
should be able to get at. However to pull out of that element,
the monies that are there that belong to the paramilitaries will
be extremely difficult. We just go after the individual and we
go after the monies that they have and if the paramilitaries lose
out in the process then that is a benefit, but stripping it down
to finding out what sums of money come from them would take years
of backtracking. It is back to what Mr Smyth said in relation
to the cost aspect of it, whether or not it would be beneficial
at the end of the day to know. We go after the individual and
the money there. It is a difficult one and one we are still very
much working on.
27. The Proceeds of Crime Bill is going through
the House at the present time. Are you aware of that?
(Mr White) Yes.
28. Will that be of assistance?
(Mr White) Certainly we are waiting on the Criminal
Assets Bureau being established. That gives us a civil standard
of proof and there is the reverse burden of proof dimension attached
to that as well. We have a series of individuals lined up whose
homes we would wish to visit and who have not got much visible
means of support for the life style they lead. Our worry and concern
is that obviously to match the workload to the size of the organisation
that will be set up, there maybe the tendency here on the mainland
to strike a financial threshold that is probably going to be in
excess of what would trigger off the activity we would wish. We
have been lobbying the NIO to make sure that the financial threshold
set for the rest of GB here, is not one that is carried across
to ourselves, so that we can put different personalities within
the frame. That is equally applicable to the Secretary of State
in terms of technical warrants and things of that nature where
there is consideration being given to setting a financial limit
in relation to cannabis. Cannabis on the mainland, the Chairman
will appreciate, is seen as a lower level of drug abuse than heroin
and cocaine. Thankfully, Northern Ireland is still ten years behind
in terms of drug abuse and the main drug of abuse in our part
of the world is still cannabis and Ecstasy and that is the way
I wish to maintain it. I would not wish to see anything struck
by the Secretary of State here as being applicable to the rest
of GB to deny me the warranty for the technical assistance that
I would wish to employ against those that are drug dealing within
the Province. It is another area that if the Committee has an
opportunity to visit I would welcome any pressure you can bring
to bear there.
29. Apart from additional finance, are there
any other measures that you would recommend that we pursue?
(Mr White) The approach we are adopting at the moment
is one of pursuing what you would call the criminal enterprise
and if I could use extortion again as an example of an area which
causes us tremendous concern because we believe that there is
only about ten per cent of extortion cases in the Province reported
to the police and that there is payment by legitimate business
to the paramilitaries of substantial sums of money. That can range,
if it is a multinational company, from anything in the region
of £200,000 down to £20 or £50 a week from a small
retail outlet. When all that is aggregated it is big sums of money.
The paramilitaries are smart. They do not bleed their host source.
They live off it. They will tailor their financial demands to
the financial profile of the business so they do not damage its
capacity to keep producing. The problem is that when you do get
a witness on board, so it might be prudent for the Committee to
look at the Italians' approach to this work, where the Mafia has
long since been heavily into extortion. The Italian Government,
having recognised this, has put into place financial support mechanisms
so that a business man who is extorted has a fairly good system
to make his report to and then if he does choose to go through
with prosecution he is supported financially to re-establish himself.
Regretfully, the way we approach it at the moment is a very money-pinching
way in that the individual, if he elects to give evidence on our
part, goes on almost to DHSS support services. He is moved in
to a council estate, given a minimum sum of money in terms of
what he would be entitled to as an unemployed person. If he is
a businessman he gets absolutely no money to re-establish himself
and is required to sell his own business within the Province if
he can and he must employ his own lawyer to do that. He is self-financing
in that aspect of it. His house will be taken off him under the
emergency provisions with the housing executive called SPED, which
allows a house to be purchased at local rates. In other words
little or no allowance is made for personal home improvements,
so he gets the bare minimum for what that house is worth. When
you look at those aspects I would ask the Committee to look to
see holistically, following the offence through, are all the things
in place that would be needed to support each step of the way
those individuals who are the victims of crime and who would wish
to take some stance with the Police Service against the paramilitaries.
Are they, when they do the sums in their head, more inclined to
say, "It is better to pay and keep paying. Therefore I can
stay in business, I can stay with my relatives and friends",
because you will appreciate that if you have to go on the run
leaving behind your whole social fabric and getting nothing to
replace that, you do not really have much of a choice as a businessman.
When you do the sums in your head you just roll over and pay.
If we are meaningfully going to tackle it we have got to take
it down to the bare wire and see in the nature of each offence
what are the unique issues that have to be addressed to get that
element of evidence that we need to prosecute the paramilitaries.
If they get alongside you in a major extortion or in relation
to hydrocarbon fuels and you are forced to strike a deal with
them, then they have got you hooked. Once you accept your first
load of laundered fuel you are not hard to persuade the second
time around because the influence is there, the blackmail is almost
there as well. Sometimes you get into a cosy partnership in that
if you are making 30p a litre more than your competitor down the
road is making your profits go up and you are in business whilst
he disappears. There is comfort in some of these issues. That
is the insidious aspect of it. It is the same thing when you buy
"security" in the building trade. Security can very
quickly change from being the contribution that you make. The
next time around you might be offered, "Would you like to
know what your competitors are bidding for the new estate that
you wish to build?" We know in the past that deals have been
struck on the basis of that. In that insidious way the paramilitary
gets even closer to the individual and deals are struck. There
is an element of comfort that comes within the business circle
sometimes and once hooked that is you forever doing business with
them. It is that link that we have to cut. The only way you can
do that is by a detailed study of each aspect of the criminal
enterprises that are there to fund the aspects of organised crime/terrorism.
Mr McGrady
30. My question is in response to an answer
you gave to Mr Tynan regarding the data coming from financial
institutions because I think that one of the ways of tackling
the broad spectrum of this is to take out the godfathers of the
rackets which are almost coterminous with the godfathers of the
paramilitaries. The answer you gave was that you get a substantial
amount of data from financial institutions but that very little
of it can be interpreted as being from money laundering exercise.
This constantly surprises me because the banking institutions,
and we are talking about huge corporations, can very readily identify
on a weekly basis upsurges in the volume of money going through
and can quite easily identify any amount that indicates that something
is astray here. I look at the statistics and I am totally surprised
that the figures for last year were something under £400,000.
To me it is peanuts in the whole exercise. How does this happen?
(Mr White) There is no effective enforcement aspect
we in the Police Service can bring to bear on this. It is an obligation
placed on the financial institutions and it is by and large only
subscribed to by the banks at this moment in time where we have
declared annually. It is something in excess of a thousand plus
disclosures of suspicious money movements. Quite often a good
few turn out to be legitimate but triggered by a that change in
what you call banking patterns. There is no obligation on accountants
to make those disclosures but that will come in the Proceeds of
Crime Act. I cannot think of one disclosure that I have had from
the legal profession despite the legal profession handling substantial
sums of money from both purchasers of business, houses and property.
There is a whole raft of people within the financial structure
who we have to find a mechanism of enervating in terms of the
public interest and placing some legal obligation upon them to
do it. Accountants do not step outside the business remit that
they have struck with the company accounts they are doing, to
see themselves as having a public duty to come to the Police Service
to make disclosures. In that sense we are denied the benefits
of what is there. The banks are the only ones at the moment that
subscribe but a thousand-odd disclosures is not a big number in
a year. The Americans have a system where anything in excess of
10,000 dollars requires a disclosure by the individual himself
especially if money is moving out of the state and all disclosure
requirements are legally based. That would be an area worthy of
perusal. What we have at the moment is of a voluntary nature.
It will be enhanced to some degree by the Proceeds of Crime Act
but with the legal people who handle a fair amount of money you
could count on the fingers of one hand the numbers of disclosures
that come our way. In unravelling existing disclosures very few
of them would have any links whatsoever as disclosures in relation
to the paramilitaries. The only time we get those is if we take
an individual and do our own financial profile on him and ask
specifically of banks for disclosures in relation to those particular
clients. Those are investigations triggered by ourselves.
31. What still surprises with the involvement
of what I understand are agreed disclosure remits is that there
is so little by way of prosecution brought to conclusion and also
the reverse of that, how it is that the known godfathers are not
targeted by the financial profile and pursued in that way. I will
leave that because you have answered it but it still puzzles me.
(Mr White) It is mainly down to resource capacity.
Every investigation we do which has a criminal enterprise aspect
attached to it we do try to do a proceeds of crime investigation
but it takes some time for those effects to work through in that
the courts can give anything up to three years before confiscation
kicks in, and so money is actually sitting due to be confiscated.
The Proceeds of Crime Act only came into effect in 1996 so we
are only now starting to see the confiscation aspect coming through.
This is not an issue for the police. It is an issue for the court
bailiffs. We have to look at that. You may have an individual
that has all the hallmarks of living a very lucrative lifestyle
with no financial income and there is no mechanism at this moment
in time for going after that individual other than if you can
get him for being involved in street crime itself. As you quite
rightly pointed out, that individual is simply bankrolling his
life style from the purchase of drugs or whatever else. The financial
trail is very well hidden and it is extremely difficult to go
back through all the processes to get at that individual. The
Proceeds of Crime Act is the first break in that area and hopefully
there will be a basket of individuals that you and I and others
would know will be a target in that respect.
Mr McCabe
32. Mr White, I wanted to pick up an answer
you gave to my colleague Mr Tynan and checked that I understood
correctly. When you referred to the drugs market and cannabis
in particular I understood you to say that you would prefer not
to follow the trend that the Home Secretary appears to have established
here which is roughly around re-classifying and I guess a trend
towards de-criminalising the drug. Was that what you said?
(Mr White) I was not talking about the de-criminalising
aspect of it. If I spoke on that it would have been a personal
view. I was speaking in respect of the drug abuse scene within
Northern Ireland which is still one that is predicated almost
entirely on Ecstasy and cannabis. The amounts of heroin and cocaine
abuse are extremely small. The picture I was trying to paint was
one of Northern Ireland being at least ten years behind in terms
of the development where heroin and cocaine, class A drugs, are
the big issue here, and quite rightly resources being put against
those by the Home Secretary and the policing services here are
very much focussed on those drugs. I am saying that when it comes
to tackling the drug scene I am coming along to Customs and Excise
with 250 kilos of cannabis being the issue of importation that
I would wish to inhibit and they are looking at me and saying,
"I am looking at 500 kilos of heroin coming in. Take your
problem down the corridor somewhere else." What I am arguing
for in relation to our drugs scene and the desire to preserve
it at the level at which it is now and not to see it worsening.
If there is a threshold set here by the Home Secretary which is
designed to address the GB problem, when it can have indirect
effects on ourselves in that if those thresholds are set which
almost exclude cannabis as being a serious concern I lose the
gateways that I have with the Customs and Excise and others where
I need to do an interdiction at Dover or somewhere else before
those drugs get into the Province, or where I am applying for
a Secretary of State's warrant for a telephone interception. If
I say it is for cannabis at a certain level, that may be a major
dealer in the Northern Ireland sense but he does not come into
the frame at all when it comes to the Secretary of State. All
I was saying was, be aware of the distinction between the Northern
Ireland drugs scene and the GB drugs scene and do not by the association
of what you call tariffs or thresholds indirectly block us from
the avenues of detection that we have at present.
Chairman
33. When you said you were delighted it was
less of a problem what you meant was that you were delighted that
you do not have the GB problem.
(Mr White) Exactly.
Mr McCabe
34. I am grateful to you for clarifying that
because I had misunderstood. Maybe it is unfair to ask you to
speculate on this but if the principal drug issue in Northern
Ireland is cannabis and if the street price is significantly lower
than it is in the rest of Britain and it is the most widely consumed
drug, would there not be a persuasive case for saying that Northern
Ireland should go further than the rest of Britain and move to
some sort of regulated legal market which would cut out the terrorist
financing element altogether? I realise it is a difficult issue
and I am not trying to ask you to speculate on the moral view
of drugs, but I am thinking purely that if the position is that
it is already widely consumed and the price is lower than it is
in Britain and the principle established in the rest of Britain
is to move to de-classifying it and a trend towards de-criminalising
it, could there be a case for saying that Northern Ireland should
go further and try to regulate the market and therefore take the
criminals and the terrorists out of it altogether?
(Mr White) I can see your line of argument about it.
I think it is beyond me at this moment, Chairman, to take that
issue forward. The simple stance we are adopting is one where
we are terribly keen to see even cannabis much reduced. The history
of hard drug abuse in the Province, and the studies that have
been done, quite clearly show that the vast majority of those
on heroin and cocaine have come at it through the softer drugs
scene in the sense of cannabis and such. It is like everything
else, if something is legalised such as cannabis, I would not
hesitate to say that within 12 months you will have some enterprising
criminal who will have found something involving cannabis plus,
the additional kick would be there, so straightaway cannabis would
be alright at one level but if you are working for a bit more
then you step into the illegal market and get cannabis plus. We
are already seeing polydrug abuse going on. So it is an argument
for another day.
Chairman: We are in a very interesting area
but can we try and discipline ourselves a bit and try and stick
rather more closely to our subject? Your answers, Mr White, have
been very clear and interesting, too, but let's just try and narrow
it down.
Mr Bailey
35. It is getting back to the issue of business
extortion and the association of businesses with the paramilitaries.
The picture you paint to me seems to show that it must be very
difficult indeed to carry out a legitimate business in Northern
Ireland without having some sort of association with one or other
of the paramilitary groups. Has any assessment been done of just
how many businesses are either victims of extortion or work knowingly
with the paramilitaries in any way whatsoever, and some I appreciate
will be laundering?
(Mr White) It is an area, sir, where we are actively
working at this moment in time. When we asked for and conducted
what we call the first strategic overview of organised crime—and
I think, Mr Chairman, that document has been made available to
the Committee—the big bit that is missing out of that is
the private sector. We sought, and have sought through a survey
conducted earlier in the year, to try and get returns from the
private sector as to how organised crime or ordinary crime was
impacting on their business as such. I must say that the returns
were pitiful. I have engaged with the Security Minister, Jane
Kennedy, on this very issue. What we are trying to do and what
is organised for the latter half of this month round about the
29th is a meeting between herself, myself, I think Sir Reg Empey
and the Confederation representatives of the building trade and
motor trade and others. We have found that trying to directly
engage individuals who are in business on this issue is not a
very productive way because they are faced with talking to police
officers, so indirectly what we are trying to do with those confederated
bodies, the Confederation of Building Trades and others, that
represent the various industries that are out there in a third
party sense, is to try to get them to give us a picture of what
their membership is actually facing. That will take, I would suspect,
24 months at least to extract any worthwhile picture there, but
by including it in the annual picture we will be publishing as
to how organised crime is impacting on the Province, we are hoping
to slowly draw those people into a mechanism that allows them
to make those disclosures. It is back to what I was saying before.
The Government needs to think through the situation and, having
got the person to the point where he is making a disclosure, there
are two avenues to go down. The first is to stop at that point
and say no more but simply know I am there, so that he is not
opening himself or herself up to chances of prosecution for simply
making a disclosure. The second is if he or she is intent on taking
the issue on through, to get rid of the monkey on their back,
then the right infrastructure must be there to support those people.
That means resettlement programmes, business support programmes
and everything else. It is a nut we are trying to crack at this
moment in time. I am not at all sure that I will be successful
by the end of the month. I will know better on the 30th as to
whether it has gone down like a lead balloon and whether they
will maintain their silence, but the idea is to try and let the
Confederations and those in a representative role speak on behalf
of their members if the members will not speak for themselves.
36. To a certain extent you have anticipated
what was my supplementary to the supplementary. Would it be helpful
to have, in effect, an amnesty for companies to give information?
I appreciate that there will be some, like the small retail unit,
where an amnesty would not be any good because they would be targeted
within their own communities, but larger and more sophisticated
organisations could effectively give that information without
the paramilitaries necessarily knowing it?
(Mr White) An amnesty might be appropriate but these
people run up against issues of income tax law as well in that
you may have been making a payment and been concealing it and
not making declarations within your returns, so there are various
hidden dissuaders there in terms of the encouragement of people.
It all needs to be unpicked slowly. The key part is making the
victim feel that he does not have to stay a hidden victim and
has some capacity with an element of immunity, I suspect, to come
out and make those disclosures, but that requires a fair degree
of work by the Government to attack the perception that is there
and to afford people a confidential mechanism to make those disclosures
and then not to hit them through income tax laws or anything else
for having done so.
37. In the long run we need to get the people
behind the extortion rather than those who are themselves victims.
(Mr White) The first objective would be to get clarity
of picture of what we are dealing with.
Mr Beggs
38. To what extent does Northern Ireland's culture
of cash businesses and cash transactions complicate the process
of investigation and enforcement? What has been done to help you
in your approach to encompass these problems?
(Mr White) That is a substantive problem. We are not
short of examples where paramilitaries have walked into certain
key businesses on the Boucher Road and have walked out with two
Mercedes or two BMWs having just paid in cash. There is nothing
in place that requires the motor trade or any other business to
make disclosures in relation to that cash transaction, so in that
sense it can be totally hidden from us and the only evidence of
it we see is when we note the individual in yet another new vehicle.
So the business of cash transactions always frustrates the capacity
to follow it through because there is no necessity for the individual
in some transactions to even leave his true identity behind. Obviously
if he is registering the vehicle he will be required to give certain
details, but in other businesses the cash transaction will always
defeat our capacity to investigate.
39. Have you, for example, made any recent check-up
on new vehicles registered to ex-prisoners because I hear on the
ground all kinds of comment about so-and-so with a new four wheel
drive truck, a new horse box behind, a couple of nags in it and
a full time groom or driver, and that is only one example, but
maybe that is another source that could be pursued.
(Mr White) You can add to that the jet skis, the holiday
home and everything else.
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