The High Court has ordered the forfeiture of three houses and a bank-account balance after finding that all four assets were acquired with or connected to proceeds of crime, including cannabis production.
Mr Justice Alexander Owens made the orders under section 3(1) of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996 in a judgment delivered on 15 February 2021. The application was brought by the Criminal Assets Bureau against Luk Yau Kwok, Weizhong Zhang and Huijuan Xu.
The properties are Mountain View, on Bansha Road in Tipperary Town; Weston, on Rathealy Road in Fermoy, County Cork; and a house at Warrenstown Rise in Blanchardstown, Dublin. The fourth asset was the credit balance in Ms Xu’s AIB account in Portlaoise. The judgment does not state the final value of that balance.
The Bureau argued that the assets were funded by criminal proceeds. The judge found that Mountain View and Weston were bought by Mr Kwok for use as cannabis grow-houses, and that the money used to buy them came from criminal activity. Gardaí found an operational grow-house at Mountain View in December 2018, with plants valued at €189,500. Weston had been converted into a grow-house when searched in April 2017; plants there were estimated to be worth €240,000.
The judge described Mr Kwok’s explanations about the purchases and their funding as unsatisfactory and did not accept that the houses were bought as investments for development or rent. He found Weizhong Zhang was a key organiser of the purchases and grow-house operations. The judgment also refers to evidence connecting Mr Zhang to cannabis operations elsewhere in Ireland and England.
Warrenstown was bought in Ms Xu’s name in 2016. The judge found that transfers from China used to fund the purchase were not gifts, but derived from laundered money or proceeds of crime. He also found that Ms Xu’s savings were connected to criminal proceeds: she had saved salary and rent while living off her husband’s earnings from the illegal drugs trade. Rent from Warrenstown deposited into her account was, the judge found, income from property acquired with criminal proceeds.
The judgment records that Mr Zhang had left the State and his whereabouts were unknown, and that Ms Xu had also left. The judge found no basis to refuse the orders on the ground of a serious risk of injustice. The decision concerns the Bureau’s civil proceeds-of-crime application; the judgment does not record criminal convictions in this proceeding.