Odd Stories: Food Importer Jailed for Not Paying €1.6m in Garlic Taxes

By Conor Pope and Joanne Hunt

Dublin - A Dublin food importer was yesterday jailed for six years for failing to pay €1.6 million in tax due on Chinese garlic, which attracts an “inexplicable” rate of import duty 24 times higher than other fruit and veg.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court was told Paul Begley (46), of Begley Brothers in Blanchardstown, evaded paying duty on more than 1,000 tonnes of garlic from China by having it mislabelled as apples.

The court heard the duty on garlic imports was up to 232 per cent, compared with just over 9 per cent for other fruits and vegetables.

Imposing the maximum jail sentence of five years on one charge of tax evasion and a further year on a second count, Judge Martin Nolan said it gave him “no joy at all to jail a decent man”. He described Begley, of Woodlock, Redgap, Rathcoole, as a “success story” and an “asset to the country”, but pointed out he had engaged in a “grave” and “huge” tax evasion scheme.

Begley had pleaded guilty to four sample counts of evading customs duty between September 2003 and October 2007. All told, he imported more than 1,000 tonnes of garlic.

The tax evasion was uncovered in October 2007 when a Dublin Port customs officers opened a container said to hold 18 tonnes of apples and two tonnes of garlic. Inside were 21 tonnes of garlic, but no apples.
The duty on garlic is €1,200 per tonne and an additional 9.6 per cent of the total. The outstanding tax on just this consignment was €25,000. Pleading for leniency, defence counsel David Keane highlighted Begley’s charity work, labelling the rate of duty on garlic “inexplicable”.

Judge Nolan said the import tax “may or may not” be excessive, but stressed it was for the Oireachtas to decide, and not individuals.

The garlic tax is not, however, set by the Government, but by the EU. According to a Revenue spokesman, it “emanates from World Trade Agreement rates and it’s to do with industry protection within the EU”.

One reason for the tax is the impact Chinese garlic imports have had on growers in Spain and France.

Producers there have said they cannot compete with the high volume and low production costs in China.

Spain is the largest grower of garlic in Europe, producing more than 100,000 tonnes annually. Farmers there have warned Chinese imports were killing their business.

The problem of garlic smuggling is now widespread across the EU, and the European Anti-Fraud office,

Olaf, has repeatedly impounded garlic consignments illegally imported from China and mislabelled as other vegetables, most frequently onions. In recent months significant amounts of Chinese garlic have been impounded in Sweden and Poland, among other countries.

More information can be found here.

Irish Hacking Suspect Freed in Wake of FBI Sting

By Shawn Pogatchnik

Dublin -  An Irish computer hacker accused of breaking into the email account of Ireland's top cybersecurity cop, then using its contents to eavesdrop on American and British anti-hacking detectives, was released without charges Wednesday.

Irish police said they were preparing a new evidence file for state prosecutors to use against Donncha O Cearbhaill. He's been arrested and released once before over alleged hacking attacks in Ireland last year.

FBI affidavits identified the 19-year-old Trinity College chemistry student as the Internet infiltrator responsible for recording and posting online a Jan. 17 trans-Atlantic conference call between American and British anti-hacking detectives.

The U.S. District Court in Manhattan, acting on FBI affidavits, issued indictments Tuesday against O Cearbhaill, two Britons, another Irishman and a Chicago man over their alleged role in a string of cyber attacks on several U.S. agencies and companies committed by an Anonymous hacker subgroup called Lulz Security, or LulzSec. The FBI built its case using the hackers' alleged leader, Sabu, as a turncoat informant who drew out incriminating online admissions from the others.

Hackers claiming allegiance to the amorphous Anonymous movement offered a defiant reply Wednesday by defacing dozens of Web sites connected to Internet defense firm Panda Security. The Anonymous activists justified their attacks citing Panda's links to law enforcement. The Bilbao, Spain-based company said its main site wasn't compromised.

Hackers from Anonymous also said they knocked out the Vatican's Web site Wednesday afternoon in a broad protest against Catholic doctrine, past and present, as well as the chronic cover-up of child abuse by clergy.

O Cearbhaill walked free from Terenure police station in south Dublin after a 24-hour interrogation period, the maximum permitted under Irish law for suspected hacking crimes.

Such releases are typical in Ireland, where state prosecutors can take months, even years, to mull whether to file charges.

He made no public comments following his release. His father John Carroll, a councilman in rural County Offaly, also declined comment.

The other Irish citizen indicted, Galway university student Darren Martyn, remained free Wednesday and conversed freely with followers on his Twitter account, in which he describes himself as a reformed "blackhat," slang for a criminal hacker.

Martyn said the FBI had got his age wrong — he's also just 19, not 25 — and he intended to keep working on his own Internet and school projects in expectation of potentially imminent arrest. He declined AP requests for an interview.

The U.S. court has indicted Martyn on two counts of hacking, with a potential 10-year prison sentence for each count, while O Cearbhaill faces one count of hacking and one count of disclosing an unlawfully intercepted wire communication, offenses that combined carry a maximum 15-year sentence.

Irish police arrested both O Cearbhaill and Martyn in September after their online noms de guerre claimed responsibility for a hacking attack on the Web site of Fine Gael, the major political party in Ireland's government. They were both released and files of evidence prepared for their potential prosecution, but they have yet to be charged over the Fine Gael attack.

According to the affidavit by FBI Special Agent George Schultzel, O Cearbhaill decided to crack the email codes of his recent police captors.

While Schultzel doesn't identify them by name, he testified that O Cearbhaill was able to crack into the private email accounts of two detectives in the Irish police's Computer Crime Investigation Unit, including its commander — and found a security gold mine because both detectives had been forwarding security-sensitive emails from their police accounts.

The FBI said it seized records of both Irish detectives' email accounts and found they'd been illegally accessed 146 times.

The affidavit reports that O Cearbhaill told his LulzSec contact Sabu Jan. 9 he had "just got into the iCloud for the head of a national cybercrime unit. I have all his contacts and can track his location 24/7." In a footnote, Schultzel identifies O Cearbhaill's target as the Irish police's cybercrime supervisor.

The Associated Press requested an interview Wednesday with the Computer Crime Investigation Unit's director, Detective Inspector Paul Gillen. He and the police force declined the request, citing their ongoing investigation.

The FBI affidavit suggests Gillen shipped a key email from the FBI — listing the invited officials and phone passwords for their Jan. 17 conference call — from his police email account to his private one.

The 15-minute discussion, and the list of security officials, both were leaked on to the Internet. In one telling moment, an FBI official asked about progress on investigating the two Irish hackers, O Cearbhaill and Martyn: "Is anyone on from Ireland?" Silence followed.

Internet security experts said they found it hard to believe that the head of a nation's cybersecurity unit would ship such a sensitive email to a poorly protected private account, then not bother to participate in the conference call.

"It's obviously deeply embarrassing," said Graham Cluley, a technology consultant for data security company Sophos. "It's a boo-boo. I would hope that more sensitive information isn't being shared via his personal account."

IRA Admits Role in Death of Nine-Year-Old Boy in 1973

Dublin, Ireland - After stating the death of a nine-year-old boy was the deed of the British army for decades, the infamous Irish Republican Army, or IRA, officially apologized for the death of Gordon Gallagher.

Gordon was a nine-year-old who accidentally stepped on a bomb in his parents' yard, leading to his death.

His father, Billy, said of the apology "I am glad they take full responsibility and accept that they were to blame and no one else," a reference to when two unknown IRA members approached him and said they planted the bomb but without a detonator. Instead they insisted British soldiers added it on in an attempt to make the IRA look bad. Billy says he "Never believed that for a second."


The admission and apology comes after Gordon's parents asked Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander in Londonderry, to tell them who planted the bomb and why.  McGuiness didn't fulfill the request short of admitting it was the act of the IRA. He himself was in jail at the time.