This is the plush pad belonging to a notorious armed robber that has now been taken over by the Criminal Assets Bureau – and is set to be sold to the highest bidder.
Proceeds from the sale of the house owned by convicted cash-in-transit robber Stefan Saunders and his wife Tammy – which is expected to fetch at least €500,000 – will now be handed over by CAB to the state. CAB took possession of the house on Thursday morning – after a mammoth High Court case. The High Court ruled back in late 2022 that the house, in Clonee on the border between Dublin and Meath, was bought from the proceeds of crime, but the Saunders launched two separate appeals to a judge’s decision to allow CAB to take control of it.
Those appeals ran out of road in recent months and CAB took possession of the five-bedroom, semi-detached house in Clonee’s Hazelbury Park on Thursday. The couple bought the house in 2005 for €360,000 – and spent some €125,000 renovating it a few years later. The renovation job saw them fitting this jacuzzi – as well as installing high-end marble counters in the bathrooms and kitchen.
And the High Court ruled the outlay on the house was just part of a massive spending spree between 2005 and 2007. That included a six-week luxury holiday in Orlando with family members and the purchase of two BMWs. And the court heard Saunders – alleged by CAB to be a serious armed robber – even paid a carpenter €30,000 in cash to do work on the Clonee house. The couple had also bought an investment property in Finglas, north Dublin at the height of their wealth.
They had denied their money was the proceeds of crime: he claimed he worked as a plasterer, while Tammy said she got a living from an interior design company they owned. But in 2022 High Court judge Mr Justice Alexander Owens rejected those arguments and the couple had access to funds “grossly out of kilter with possible sources of legitimate earnings”.
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He gave CAB permission to take possession of the property, but the Saunders appealed first to the court of appeal and then the Supreme Court. But CAB finally got the keys to the house on Thursday – and it was empty when they gained access. But the plush extension and the high-end fittings and jacuzzi were in pristine condition.
Stefan Saunders, 46, was jailed in 2018 for seven-and-a-half years after gardai foiled a cash-in-transit armed robbery in 2016. He and his accomplices were arrested by the heavily-armed Emergency Response Unit as they prepared to rob a cash delivery van in Dunboyne, Co Meath.
He is also suspected by the Criminal Assets Bureau of being involved in the €1.8million Brinks Allied security van robbery in Artane, Dublin in 2005.
He was charged with false imprisonment in connection with a tiger kidnapping of a cash-in-transit company employee in Dublin in 2010.
The trial was abandoned after a decision by the Supreme Court.
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