Money laundering suspect arrested by anti-organised crime unit probing UVF activity

Officers from the Paramilitary Crime Task Force investigating criminality linked to East Belfast UVF have today arrested a 35-year-old man.

He was detained in the east Belfast area on suspicion of money laundering and various drugs offences as part of Operation Venetic.

Venetic is the UK’s biggest law enforcement operation against serious and organised criminality, led by the National Crime Agency (NCA).

The man has been taken to Musgrave police station in the city centre for questioning.

Details of Operation Venetic were unveiled at the start of the month by the NCA.

At that time, the force said it had made 746 arrests, found £54m in criminal cash, uncovered 77 firearms, and seized two tonnes of drugs.

The result, said the NCA, was that “entire organised crime groups” had been “dismantled”.

On July 2, the NCA said much of Venetic centred on an encrypted message service.

It said: “UK law enforcement has made a massive breakthrough in the fight against serious and organised crime after the takedown of a bespoke encrypted global communication service used exclusively by criminals.

“EncroChat was one of the largest providers of encrypted communications and offered a secure mobile phone instant messaging service, but an international law enforcement team cracked the company’s encryption.

“There were 60,000 users worldwide and around 10,000 users in the UK – the sole use was for coordinating and planning the distribution of illicit commodities, money laundering and plotting to kill rival criminals.”

It is not known if the arrest of the 35-year-old man is linked to the EncroChat decryption.

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