The auction of more than 100 items including gold watches and luxury handbags will happen early next month.
The total value of the goods for sale is around €500,000 and all of the items – owned or worn by a criminal or their family – have been seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau.
The luxury items, which will include gold Rolex watches, Louis Vuitton bags and Moncler jackets worth thousands of euro, are part of the €6.3m of assets that gardaí seized from criminals in 2022.
While a lot of the jewellery is in near-mint condition, all of the items are second-hand and previously owned by criminals or their friends and relatives.
One of the Moncler jackets going up for auction has been valued at €3,600, while one of the 50 watches up for grabs is a €6,000 18ct gold Rolex watch still in its box.
All of the items were originally bought from the proceeds of crime like drug dealing and fraud and it would have taken a High Court judge to decide whether or not CAB was right to seize the items.
As well as the items being owned by criminals, they are likely to have appeared in videos posted on social media by gangsters keen to flaunt their wealth.
CAB’s Chief Bureau Officer Detective Chief Superintendent Michael Gubbins revealed details of the auction on RTÉ yesterday.
He said criminals have always flaunted their wealth and little has changed since the Criminal Assets Bureau was established months after the murders of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe and Journalist Veronica Guerin in 1996.
But he said one new aspect is social media, and that in the past there would not have been so much showing off of wealth in the 1990s as there is nowadays.
Speaking on , he said: “It’s a younger generation of people and they buy into the social media side of things.
“Now, it is much more ostentatious and it’s very much in your face.
“In the first week in December, the CAB will (host) an online auction with over 100 items in it.” On the items themselves and their previous owners, he added: “It’s the proceeds of crime.
“Our job is to go after the assets that individuals have acquired through criminality.
“They have left behind people who are addicted, people who have chaotic lifestyles.
“They have caused consternation in their community, and have left people distressed, and violence and intimidation.
“They live this lifestyle to show it to the community in which they live, so we go in and take it away.”
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