Alex Trelinski
TEN house searches were executed on Wednesday in Lanzarote by the Guardia Civil investigating an Irish-led money-laundering crime gang.
In addition, the Dublin home of Gerry Hutch was raided by Irish police following a request by the Guardia Civil who sent an officer.
There have been reports of ‘multiple arrests’.
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Gardai officers from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation supported the Guardia in the Spanish leg of the operation investigating the Hutch Organised Crime Group.
It is believed the suspected criminal targeted in the searches has links to the criminal gang.
Irish sources stressed it was a Spanish-led investigation into suspected money laundering offences.
“This morning’s operation is part of ongoing liaison between the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Guardia Civil which targets a Transnational Organised Crime Group who are located both in Ireland and Spain,” a garda spokesperson said.
The investigation into money laundering by the Hutch criminal network has been running for two years.
A previous search targeting the group was conducted in Lanzarote in June 2022 by the Guardia Civil.
During that operation, a property used by one of Gerry Hutch’s junior associates was targeted.
The Lanzarote home was not the property where Hutch had been living in recent years before the outbreak of the Hutch-Kinahan gang feud.
Hutch, 61, relocated to Lanzarote permanently after he was dramatically acquitted of murder in April 2023.
He was found not guilty by a Dublin court of the murder of gangland rival David Byrne at the Regency Hotel during his group’s feud with the notorious Kinahan cartel.
Since then Hutch has opened a string of bed and breakfasts on the north side of Lanzarote.
He rents out most of the rooms on long-term leases for hard-pressed workers who have found that the rental market has increasingly been transformed into tourist rentals.
