A garda is at the centre of a major anti-corruption investigation – for allegedly paying a criminal to attack another officer’s home, it has emerged.
The Irish Mirror can reveal that the officer is suspected of giving a low-level criminal €300 to attack a female officer’s house – and is now being investigated by the recently-established Garda Anti-Corruption Unit.
The case has been handed to the Dublin-based ACU and sources have told us the officer has been suspended.
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But they also warned the officer is likely to be sacked - but could also face criminal prosecution and even jail time if the allegations are proven.
“The whole station is talking about it. Nobody can believe it,” one source said last night. Sources have also told us that the garda is suspected of leaking sensitive information to the criminal – an offence that carries up to five years in jail on conviction.
We have learned that Garda bosses in a station in the Leinster area called in the force’s ACU earlier this month – after local detectives allegedly uncovered evidence that one of their own colleagues was behind an attack on a female officer.
The female garda called colleagues for assistance after a brick was thrown through a window of her home in a Leinster town.
Officers treat any attack on a garda’s home seriously - and immediately began a major investigation.
They quickly secured CCTV footage from a nearby house and identified a taxi that was seen in the area at the time of the attack.
Sources say investigators tracked down the taxi driver – who confirmed he had been asked to bring a man to the estate where the female officer lives.
He also told gardai that the man in the taxi told him to wait at the scene and he came back a few minutes later before telling him to drive off.
Detectives quickly established that the fare was a low-level criminal and small-time drug dealer from the same town - and he was then arrested on suspicion of attacking the officer’s house.
He was held at the local Garda station – and initially refused to make any comment.
But detectives then raided his house and found a secret phone – with voice notes.
Sources have revealed that one of the messages allegedly warned the criminal that he had been identified as the main suspect for the attack on the female officer’s home.
It’s understood the voice note told the criminal to get out of his house before he could be arrested.
The criminal was later confronted with the voice notes and claimed to detectives he was paid €300 by the officer to attack the female garda’s home.
Sources say the ACU is now investigating the male garda for allegedly ordering the attack on the female officer’s home – and also for allegedly leaking information to the criminal.
If he is charged and convicted of that offence, the maximum sentence if a €50,000 fine and up to five years in prison, source said.
“Leaking information to a criminal is as serious as it gets,” a source said last night.
“If he is convicted, he is in real trouble.
Gardai did not comment when contacted by The Irish Mirror last night.
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