Organized crime gangs in Ireland are renting private vaults to store the private keys and seed phrases that control their crypto wallets, keeping them alongside cash, luxury watches and handbags, according to the head of the state's asset-seizure agency.

Detective Chief Superintendent Michael Gubbins, who runs the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), told the Sunday Independent that the practice emerged from the bureau's own investigations and has been reported to the government's Anti-Money Laundering Steering Committee.

The contents of such vaults, he said, "could be cryptocurrency keys or cash or watches or could even be passports." He added: "Again, it's from our experience, what we would have seen around those matters."

Preparing for new EU rules

The steering committee is preparing Ireland for a set of EU anti-money laundering rules due to take effect next summer. The package will ban cash transactions above €10,000 and require businesses to identify anyone spending €3,000 or more in cash. Crypto-asset service providers, luxury goods retailers and crowdfunding platforms all face tighter supervision, bringing crypto-related businesses into a wider set of controls aimed at tracking illicit finance.

Ireland published its first national anti-money laundering strategy last month, building on an earlier action plan that tightened crypto safeguards.

"Still quite basic"

Gangs turn to crypto to spread risk against seizure and for the cover they believe it provides. "They believe there's an anonymity attached to it," Gubbins said in an interview alongside the report, though he pointed to price volatility and the risk of losing wallet passwords as offsetting problems.

Nevertheless, he told the paper that criminal use of crypto in Ireland remains "still quite basic," and that cash continues to dominate illicit proceeds. "It's still a cash business for those engaged in drug trafficking."

The bureau has instead encountered professional launderers for hire, including operators of hawala — an informal transfer system in which cash deposited in one country is paid out in another without crossing a border. Gubbins put the typical commission at roughly 6%. In one such investigation, the bureau seized €230,000 from a safe deposit box at a private vault company.

Largest crypto seizure in bureau history

Separately, the bureau is working through the biggest crypto seizure in its history, having cracked the first of 12 wallets in March with the help of Europol. The wallets hold 6,000 BTC taken from a cannabis grower in 2019, whose private keys were written down and hidden in a fishing rod case that was later lost.

Gubbins said more than €130 million of the €360 million holding has now been realized. The bureau returned almost €15 million to the Irish exchequer last year.