Authorities have detained a man identified as Farhats Bahtijevs, age 55, of Earlsfort Court, Lucan, on suspicion of various criminal activities. Bahtijevs, who the police believe is of Russian descent, attended a hearing at the District Court of Blanchardstown on Monday. This session was held in relation to findings made at undisclosed Dublin locations on the 27th and the 28th of September.
Bahtijevs faces a total of ten charges. Four involve drug-related activities: two for drug dealing and two for drug possession, with the drugs in question being cocaine and MDMA. Three more charges are associated with money laundering, another alleges possession of a fraudulent Irish driving licence, and the last two charges levy accusations of owning a counterfeit Latvian passport.
Over the course of a search operation in Dublin, authorities seized roughly €1.4 million in bullion gold, €460,000 in hard cash, and an estimated €210,000 worth of what’s believed to be cocaine. A safe in Dublin 4 contained 18 kilograms of gold bullion with a market value of approximately €1,375,218, an amount that authorities are calling the largest-ever bullion gold discovery in the country.
Garda guard Seán McElroy testified that he apprehended Bahtijevs on the 27th of September at his Lucan residence. Bahtijevs was held at the Garda station in Ronanstown as per Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act of 1984. He was released at 6:10 PM on the 28th of September only to be rearrested approximately an hour and a half later.
Bahtijevs was subsequently charged on all ten counts, and his responses to these charges were not recorded by the court. In the absence of any bail applications, Defence Solicitor Ciaran McLoughlin has requested that Bahtijevs appear before the District Court of Cloverhill via video link on the 4th of October.
Justice David McHugh ordered Mr Bahtijevs to remain in detention until a future court date. A subject on legal aid will be postponed for further discussion on another occasion. The Dublin Crime Response Team officers apprehended two additional suspects on Monday morning in connection to the case. One woman of her 30s and another in her 50s were taken into custody in Dublin. As of now, both are kept in custody under Section 2 of the Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Act, 1996, in Dublin’s Garda stations and have the possibility of being detained up to a week.