DRUG DEALER GETS COURT STAY ON CAB SALE OF 10 ACRES

A convicted Dutch drugs trafficker yesterday succeeded in preventing the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) from immediately selling land they recently seized in Sneem, Co Kerry.

Jan Hendrik Ijpelaar (53), from Rotterdam, was granted a stay on the sale of 10 acres at Greenane which he claimed he had bought with personal finances not tainted by drug trafficking.

He said he did not own Clashnacree House, Derryquinn, Sneem, set on 20 acres, which the bureau had also seized last month.

Ijpelaar said the Derryquinn property was owned by a Swiss company, Marbella Assets, in which he had sold all his shares eight years ago.

Mr Justice Paul Butler granted a stay on the sale of the land at Greenane but said the CAB could go ahead with the auction of Clashnacree House and surrounding land in which Ijpelaar had not claimed an interest.

Last month the bureau told the High Court that the sale of Ijpelaar's Kerry properties could realise about pounds 1.5m.

The court granted an order for possession and sale and CAB legal officer Barry Galvin was appointed receiver with power to take possession and sell it on the open market.

Ijpelaar was a renowned trafficker in ecstasy and cannabis and had been convicted in Holland and jailed for six years in 1992, the court heard.

Chief Supt Felix McKenna, head of the CAB, said the Clashnacree property, with a gate lodge, tennis courts and swimming pool, had been abandoned in recent years but had been kept under surveillance by bureau officers.

He said Ijpelaar had bought Clashnacree in 1991 for pounds 300,000 and had gone to great lengths to conceal the purchase.

It had allegedly been bought with the aid of a fake mortgage taken out through a British Virgin Islands firm, Howard Financial Services, which had since been struck off the companies register.

Chief Supt McKenna said Ijpelaar had been a leader of organised crime in Holland, importing, exporting and distributing ecstasy and cannabis. He had no other legitimate source of income.

Ijpelaar said yesterday he had been outside Europe when the CAB seized the properties and did not know about it until two days ago.

He claimed he had income tax documents to show he had worked and earned money in the early 1990s and this was the finance he had used to buy the property at Greenane.

He had no objection to the CAB seeking that documentation from the Dutch authorities.

Shane Murphy, counsel for the bureau, said that while the CAB consented to an order staying the sale of the Greenane land until full determination of the proceedings by the court, it was still their case that Ijpelaar was the beneficial owner of all of the properties in Kerry.