Gardaí investigating the Hutch Organised Crime Group have seized a substantial quantity of drugs in Dublin and arrested three people.
MDMA, cocaine, ecstasy tablets and cannabis jellies with an estimated street value of €2m were seized after a car and a van were stopped and an apartment was searched in Blanchardstown at around 5pm this evening
Three men aged 35, 40 and 53 were arrested, one of whom is a senior figure in the Hutch gang.
A violent criminal with convictions for assault he is also a target of the rival Kinahan Organised Crime Group which has made several attempts on his life.
A man closely associated was with him has also been arrested and a third man who originally from Asia is also in custody.
They are being detained at a Dublin garda station and can be questioned for up to seven days.
Gardaí say the seizure is the result of an intelligence operation led by the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau which has been investigating the two feuding criminal gangs.
Garda evidence on the structure and operations of the Hutch Organised Crime Group has been accepted by the Special Criminal Court.
A senior investigator said the gang was predominantly from Dublin city centre and built on intergenerational family bonds.
Detective Superintendent David Gallagher said the organised crime group is less hierarchical than some criminal organisations and operates a patriarchal system based on loyalty and monetary gain.
Historically, he said it is quite a fluid organisation whose associates and affiliates work together, independently and with other criminal organisations to commit crime.
Its rules and procedures like those of other organised crime groups are “not set in stone”.
However, since 2015 he said and the emergence of the feud there has been a “galvanisation” of positions within the Hutch Organised Crime Group.
Gary Hutch was shot dead in Spain in 2015 in a murder that escalated the Hutch-Kinahan feud and led to the retaliatory murder of Kinahan gang member David Byrne at the Regency Hotel in February 2016.
Eighteen people have been shot dead as a result of the feud.
