How did international drug gangs avoid police surveillance? South Dublin criminal Ciaran O'Sullivan helped them out

Irish Times

2 days ago

Nestled in the foothills of the
Swiss
alps with breathtaking views over Lake Geneva is Surval Montreux, a boarding school for girls which looks more like a luxury ski resort.
Surval Montreux was founded as a finishing school where girls practised their table manners and curtsies before debuting in upper-class society. Today, it bills itself as an international boarding school 'dedicated to providing a holistic and enriching educational experience' to students while also teaching them etiquette as 'a core value.'
Simply applying for a place costs about €8,000. After that, it costs almost €120,000 a year, not including optional extras such as ski trips and airport transfers.
Students are almost universally children of the super rich. According to one source, it is not unusual for girls at the school to be accompanied by bodyguards.
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Recent attendees include the
two daughters of Irishman
Ciaran 'Sam' O'Sullivan (50), a close associate of the
Kinahan cartel
and one of the main suppliers of encrypted phones to the European underworld.
'Ciaran O'Sullivan is renowned by multiple law enforcement agencies as a transnational drug trafficker with [organised crime groups] crime connections in Ireland,
United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands,' a senior
Criminal Assets Bureau
(Cab) officer told a High Court hearing this week during an application to seize his assets.
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O'Sullivan's route to the top of European organised crime is an unusual one. He was born to a wealthy family in South Dublin and was raised by his aunt in the upper-class suburb of Glenageary. 'The house is quite impressive', said one security source.
He first came to significant Garda attention as a young man in the late nineties when he was observed by officers from the National Drugs Unit associating with drug trafficker Chris Casserly.
He later started working with notorious gangland figure John Cunningham while developing his own reputation as a skilled drug trafficker, able to move large consignments of cannabis from North Africa into Europe under the noses of authorities.
In the 2010s, European drugs gangs were seeking ways to avoid police surveillance of telephone communications. O'Sullivan was one of the first criminals to take advantage of this.
In the early 2000s he began operating alongside Kinahan gang member Bernard Clancy who would go on to be sanctioned by the US authorities as part of their crackdown on the organised crime group.
This led to O'Sullivan's first big conviction. Along with Clancy and Casserly, he was arrested in Spain with 1,200 kgs of cannabis. He was jailed for four years in 2003.
On his release, O'Sullivan continued in the drug-trafficking business. He developed a network of contacts across Europe's criminal underworld and cemented his association with the Kinahan cartel.
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He was particularly close with the gang's patriarch, Christy Kinahan Senior, who admired O'Sullivan's intelligence and level-headedness.
However, sources say he was never a member of the gang – he was very much his own man who maintained independent operations and wealth as he moved between residences in the Netherlands, Spain and Ireland.
Despite his reputation for intelligence, he continued to attract the attention of authorities in Ireland and elsewhere. In 2007, he was jailed for a month in the Netherlands in relation to the seizure of amphetamines, a firearm and a large amount of cash.
In the 2010s, European drugs gangs were seeking ways to avoid police surveillance of telephone communications. O'Sullivan was one of the first criminals to take advantage of this.
Things took a turn for the worse for O'Sullivan in 2020 when French and Dutch police managed to infiltrate EncroChat
In 2016, he started sourcing
EncroChat
phones, which allowed criminals to communicate with each other with little chance of the authorities being able to eavesdrop.
O'Sullivan became one of the main resellers of the phones in Europe, particularly to French criminals. Using the code name Shamrock, he operated from Haute Savoie, an idyllic part of the French alps just 80km across the border from the Swiss school where he would later send his children.
One of his main subordinarates was Clontarf man Robert Noctor, who would later be caught by gardaí driving around with almost €100,000 in cash and several EncroChat phones.
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O'Sullivan's EncroChat operation was a runaway success, significantly increasing his wealth and influence in the European underworld. However, he continued to make most of his income from his drug-trafficking operations.
Things took a turn for the worse for O'Sullivan in 2020 when French and Dutch police managed to infiltrate EncroChat and gain access to huge amounts of data relating to organised crime.
As a result, hundreds of criminals were arrested across the Continent and large consignments of drugs and weapons were taken off the streets over the following months.
Information from the investigation was shared with the Garda and Cab, who used it to target a Chinese gang involved in large-scale money laundering in Ireland.
The gang operated a kind of illicit international banking system which allowed Irish criminals to drop a consignment of money into Chinese takeaways in Dublin and later withdraw the same amount from another restaurant overseas.
Millions of euro was laundered
through the system by Irish criminals
. These included O'Sullivan, who used the Chinese gang to launder the proceeds of his drug and encrypted phone business.
Using information from the EncroChat operation, in June 2020 gardaí raided the home of O'Sullivan's aunt as well as his girlfriend, neither of whom are involved in criminality.
They seized various types of new mobile phones along with encryption technology. Other items included luxury watches, a gold bullion coin and a Louis Vuitton briefcase containing payment details for the prestigious Swiss school.
This week, as Cab applied to the High Court for confiscation of the items, they argued the school receipts were evidence of O'Sullivan enjoying a luxury lifestyle, despite having no obvious income. The judge agreed and ordered confiscation of the goods.
O'Sullivan was not in court for the proceedings, having previously told Cab he had no intention of returning to Ireland.
He continues to live a luxurious lifestyle and spends most of his time in Dubai – the centre of the Kinahan's operations – where he owns a luxury seaview apartment.