When we think of money laundering, most of us picture the classic set-up: dirty cash generated from crime is spun through a business – a car dealership, a barber shop or a fast-food restaurant – where it is mixed with legitimate earnings before emerging “clean” at the other end. That’s a method still favoured by some criminals, as the story of one Co Limerick garage that was raided by the Garda Criminal Assets Bureau reminds us. But as Conor Lally explains in his exploration of the phenomenon, technology is changing the game. With so much crime occurring online, and cash seldom entering the crime chain, the challenge facing criminal gangs is how to keep money moving online so as to conceal its origins – a dispersal process that relies on “money mules” who make their accounts available.
“Det Supt Micheal Cryan of the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB), the specialist unit that investigates money laundering, has repeatedly warned of an ‘explosion’ in the recruitment of money mules,” Lally writes. “This gained pace in Ireland during the pandemic years as online scams took off.
And with greater Garda focus and a higher willingness to prosecute offenders, the number of recorded money laundering cases has risen from just 53 in 2017 to almost 3,000 last year.
On Friday, voters in Dublin Central and Galway West will go to the polls in two byelections that will have little effect on the balance of forces in Leinster House but will provide some useful snapshots of public opinion.
In Dublin Central, an Ipsos B&A opinion poll we commissioned jointly with TG4 this week showed Sinn Féin’s Janice Boylan with a small lead in the constituency of her party leader, Mary Lou McDonald. Daniel Ennis of the Social Democrats trails Boylan by a few points, but he looks transfer-friendly. As our editorial notes, the big picture emerging from both campaigns tells a similar story: a fragmented field where transfers will be decisive, a weakened Fianna Fáil struggling to remain competitive, and an electorate that appears increasingly detached from traditional party loyalties.
It’s not a happy picture for Fianna Fáil, then, but at its ardfheis this weekend the party is marking the 100th anniversary of its founding. Here Pat Leahy looks at the state of a party that, while now far from the heights it reached in the mid-20th century, maintains a remarkable record of winning and retaining power.
Our reporters on the campaign trail are worth following: this weekend Jack Horgan-Jones goes on a walkabout with the Sinn Féin campaign in the capital, Harry McGee flies to Inis Oírr with Fine Gael’s Seán Kyne, and Katie Mellett hears from Bohemians fans on their way into Dalymount Park.
The stakes will be somewhat higher in a looming byelection in the north of England, where the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, is seeking a route to the House of Commons so that he can challenge prime minister Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership.
Our man in London, Mark Paul, has been following every step and skirmish of Labour’s war with itself, and he rounds out the week by looking through a wider lens at the mood of the country Starmer or his successor must lead.
“Whoever eventually succeeds Starmer in the race for Downing Street will face the same problems he does. Britain is on the edge, its centre in real danger of collapse.”
There are 5,571 homeless children in Ireland, according to the Department of Housing. That statistic – showing a 20 per cent increase in a year – is one of the few associated with the national housing crisis that can still stop people in their tracks. Yet we seldom if ever hear from any of those children. In a powerful piece this weekend, Kitty Holland speaks to several children whose families have no home or who have recently emerged from emergency accommodation.
“It is small,” says Sophie (not her real name) of the room where her family life. “There’s a bunk bed with a double bed on the bottom and a single bed on the top. I share the bed on the bottom with my mam.”
Sophie has her own drawer; her brother has one too.
“He has about 50 billion teddies in his drawer and then all his teddies go in my drawer, and then my drawer is messy and it’s so annoying. Then we have just the fridge and then we have a window.”
Asked what they would like, the children mention some basic things: more space, better beds and sheets, and less shouting. Take the time to read the full piece.
Elsewhere in our national news section, Mark Tighe reports that the US-based building tycoon Maurice Regan has filed a High Court action against billionaire racing boss John Magnier and his stud business, while Conor Gallagher writes about how weapons systems that can target perceived threats automatically using AI could soon be part of the Defence Forces’ armoured fleet.
Donald Trump was in Beijing this week for the first visit to China by a US president in almost a decade. Our China Correspondent, Denis Staunton, was looking on and this weekend he assesses a visit that, he concludes, did little to alter the fundamentals of the relationship between the two countries.
But some things have changed. “If the issue of human rights failed to come up during Trump’s visit, it was not only because China is now too powerful to listen to lectures from the West,” Staunton writes. “It is also because the US’s foothold on the moral high ground, unsteady at the best of times, has given way altogether under Trump.”
I enjoyed Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s debut novel, A Ghost in the Throat. Her latest has just been published, and today she speaks to Martin Doyle about what she calls her “really weird books that are hard to describe.”
This weekend I’m reading Sally Hayden’s book – due out next week – about love in times of conflict and crisis. Reflecting on the idea behind the book, she writes: “I wanted to remind readers of something that should be obvious, but often is forgotten: that humans exist at the centre of geopolitics. Strip away headlines, statistics, front pages and photo captions, and what you are left with is a majority of people just trying to get by as best they can, while taking care of those that mean something to them.”
Enjoy the weekend,
Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
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