The Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) has sold land and property formerly owned by a well known missing criminal for €1 million. The land and rental property were seized by Cab from Dubliner Seán Dunne about two years ago.
Yesterday a half-acre site in Ratoath, Co Meath, was sold at auction, fetching €750,000 for Cab. A house in Cashel, Co Tipperary, which was also owned by Mr Dunne was sold this week by Cab for €250,000.
Six holiday homes in Donegal were also seized from Mr Dunne and when these are sold in coming months they are expected to fetch as much as €2 million. The houses are located in the Donegal villages of Portnablagh and Creslough. One includes a gymnasium with sauna and jacuzzi.
Cab had a receiver appointed who acquired a High Court order recently to sell the six houses by public auction on February 24th in the Mount Errigal Hotel, Letterkenny, at 3pm. The office of the Chief State Solicitor, Harcourt Street, Dublin, is dealing with the sale.
Mr Dunne (34) is originally from Donaghmede, Dublin. About six years ago he moved into a house in Ratoath, where he was shot in an apparent assassination attempt in late 2003.
Shortly after this attack he fled Ireland and relocated to the Alicante region of Spain. However, he went missing in Spain in mid-2004 and nothing has been heard from him since.
Gardaí immediately believed he may have been killed. Two members of the Dublin Westies gang, Shane Coates and Stephen Sugg, vanished in the same area shortly before Mr Dunne's disappearance. They too are missing presumed dead.
Mr Dunne, a father of two, has convictions for assault and theft. At the time he disappeared Cab was seeking some €4 million from him after assessing him for unpaid taxes on his income since the mid 1990s.
He was reported to have owned a number of properties in Spain when he disappeared. He had laundered about €1 million of what gardaí believed to be the proceeds of crime by lodging the money into the account of a senior bank official with whom he was associated.
