Head of CAB lands senior position with EU police force
THE head of the (CAB) Criminal Assets Bureau has been appointed to a major operational post with Europol.
Det Chief Supt Pat Byrne (50), who has been chief bureau officer since October, will take up his new position in The Hague in September.
Europol last night confirmed the appointment, which is regarded as an honour for gardai.
He becomes head of the organised crime networks unit, known as O8, and will be in charge of a team of officers drawn from police forces across Europe.
Europol chief, Rob Wainright, said Chief Supt Byrne had been heavily involved in fighting organised crime in Ireland and would now take up a similar job at an international level.
He is the first garda to take up a senior management post with the agency and he was selected from candidates drawn up from EU police forces.
Born in Dublin, Chief Supt Byrne has spent most of his career in the garda force in crime-fighting units, including spells as an undercover detective with the national drugs squad and in fraud, where he set up a new computer crime unit. He also investigated the case against solicitor Elio Malocco.
While working with the murder squad, he found the body of nurse Bridie Gargan, who was murdered by Malcolm Macarthur, and was one of the first officers to be appointed to the CAB when it was founded after the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin in 1996.
He told the Irish Independent last night that he had enjoyed 31 "fabulous" years in the garda and said the skills he had been taught there had allowed him to successfully apply for the Europol job.
- Tom Brady Security Editor
Irish Independent
