Leading Northern Ireland business figures openly told Church of Ireland archbishop Dr Robin Eames in 1993 of the extortion money they were forced to pay to the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries.
The disclosure was made at a dinner hosted by the archbishop, a meeting of Irish and British officials in June 1993, called to consider means of curbing such crimes.
Paramilitaries were able “to cream off” up to £2m a year from the construction industry, to make £10m from smuggling and £500,000 a year from film videos.
They decided “who works and who does not in some areas, eg black taxis, construction”, enjoying “the leverage that this gives them, particularly in deprived communities”.
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The meeting heard from Mr Alastair Munroe, who was then leading the Terrorism Finance Unit “with the biggest computer in the United Kingdom” to tackle terrorist funding.
In 1990, £6m worth of fuel was delivered to the firm run by the later jailed IRA chief of staff, Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, but “none of it was distributed in Northern Ireland” since “it all went south”.
The IRA was “far ahead of the loyalists” in such crime, but the loyalists were quickly catching up, the meeting was told, with money coming too from gaming machines, social clubs and armed robberies.
Two loyalists were overheard in Belfast’s Crown Bar in 2000 by a Foreign Affairs official, saying that both the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force made money from drugs.
Fifteen loyalist social clubs were closed in 1991 by the antiterrorist finance unit, while 15 more were left open, but subjected to tougher accounting rules.
“In the latter case, the takings showed remarkable improvements, up by £1.3m in one year,” said Mr Munro, who believed that the clubs had previously hidden four-fifths of their income.
The closure of the drinking clubs controlled by the IRA throughout the city is estimated to have cost it £3m a year annually, Mr Munro told the June 1993 meeting.
Illustrating the corruption then rampant in the construction industry, one official told the meeting that tenders were regularly rigged, “with terrorists forcing landowners to sell building land cheap to specific purchasers”.
Meanwhile, income tax evasion was common using forged tax exemption certificates, along with VAT fraud and the hiring of “black economy” workers who were already claiming benefits.
“Organisers of work gangs using false names and false tax exemption certificates can cream off 35 per cent of gross wages. The workers also benefit by claiming welfare.
In one case, the antiterrorist finance investigators and the Royal Ulster Constabulary conducted a raid on a man suspected of using the forged exemption certificates. Once there, they found evidence that showed that he was also involved in jewellery theft, money laundering, armed robbery and burglary, the meeting was told.
However, the paramilitaries’ involvement in the construction industry was “merely a complication to the fact that the industry is rotten anyway”, the meeting was told.
“It is impossible to specifically target terrorist fraud in the construction industry. The industry as a whole must be cleaned up,” Mr Munroe told the meeting.
