EXCLUSIVE | 

Mob boss Barry Young’s bogus ‘cleaning service’ for laundering dirty money exposed

When the Sunday World spoke with workers in one of the businesses at the property, they told us they had never heard of STY Global or Barry Young

Yesterday at 15:50

This is the corner-shop building in Alicante from which gang-boss Barry Young registered a ‘cleaning service’ intended to wash his dirty cash.

Company records show how the Sligo gangster, caged for 11 years earlier this month, registered STY Global and Construction Sl, operating out of Unit Three at 36 Avenida Naciones in Alicante, Spain on October 24, 2019.

But when the Sunday World spoke this week with workers in one of the businesses at the property, they told us they had never heard of STY Global or Barry Young.

The building is located less than an hour’s drive from the Torrevieja villa formerly occupied by crook John Gilligan, with whom Young was suspected to have business ties.

Gilligan (70) was arrested at the Los Balcones property in October 2020 after police discovered he had been shipping cannabis and powerful sleeping pills back to Ireland hidden in boxes of children’s toys and flip-flops.

He and his associates have been charged with drug trafficking, the illegal possession of weapons, and belonging to a criminal gang.

Company records for Young’s Alicante company show that even before investigators discovered his involvement, STY Global had been put on a risk-watch by company monitoring service ‘Skyfinder’ over its unusual finances.

Young registered the company using an alias and listed its activities as “the general cleaning of buildings”.

But the front was described by the monitoring company as “high risk” and given a “liquidity score” of just one out of 100.

Potential suppliers were also warned “payment delay probability” was “high”.

STY Global was one of two front companies operated by Young.

At home in Ireland, he registered BY (Barry Young) Recovery out of his home address on Geldof Drive in Cranmore, Sligo.

He listed the company’s activities as “service activities incidental to land transportation” and his own profession as a “mechanic”.

Young, who is also suspected of having interests in two apartments and a bar in Alicante, was flying out to the Spanish holiday paradise on January 11 when he was nabbed by gardai at Dublin Airport.

The arrest was the culmination of a painstaking investigation stretching over a number of years during which gardai established that Young was the boss of a 20-strong gang operating across Sligo, Donegal, Leitrim and Galway, where it was involved in drug-dealing, intimidation and money laundering.

Following Young’s arrest, gardai seized his phone and discovered thousands of messages, images, videos and calls relating to the mobster’s criminal activities in running the Sligo-based gang.

Phone activity revealed messages about drug seizures, drug-debt enforcement, intimidation, cash lodgements and movements, and the collection and distribution of drugs.

Young moved money through a business to a Spanish account held in his name in February and April 2019.

The transfers totalling €35,000 were made ahead of his planned departure from Ireland.

The court heard that drug seizures linked to the gang totalled over €628,000, while Young himself had €40,000 in ready cash despite his only stated income being social welfare payments.

Outlining the background to the arrest, Detective Garda Inspector Ray Mulderrig told the Special Criminal Court that he believed Young was fleeing to Spain in a bid to escape his life of crime and drug-debts.

After Young’s January 2022 arrest in Dublin Airport, searches in the Sligo area found €36,360 in cash, €145,250 worth of cannabis, €11,000 worth of cocaine and €4,500 worth of valium and diazepam linked to the gang.

A search of Young’s home by Sligo gardai saw the seizure of banking and vehicle documents, along with business papers for BY Recovery, though investigations found that no facility or yard for the business existed.

Michael Bowman SC, for Young, said his client had been under “enormous pressure” to pay his debts and had been looking for “a way out of the life he made for himself”, adding that Young was preparing to move out of Ireland when arrested.

Det Insp Mulderrig agreed with Mr Bowman that there had been a legitimate threat to Young’s life due to his debts and that his client’s mental health had suffered as a result.

At his sentencing hearing on July 31, Mr Justice Tony Hunt described Young as a “scourge on the people of Sligo for a number of years” and he noted evidence that a relatively small community in the west of Ireland is “burdened by four such gangs”.

Mr Justice Hunt set the headline sentence at 16 years but due to mitigating factors, including Young’s early guilty plea, he reduced that to 12 years.

Mr Justice Hunt said the purpose of the suspension is to acknowledge that he is young enough to emerge back into the community and he wants to incentivise Young’s promises that he would “turn his life in a different direction”.

Following the sentence, Chief Supt Aidan Glacken told the media outside court that “Barry Young has been involved in the sale and distribution of controlled drugs for the last 20 years.

“He directed and controlled a very large, organised crime gang involved in an illegal business in the northwest of the country and this gang had substantial international links.

“In the pursuit of greed and in the pursuit of money, this organised crime gang has caused much harm, much stress, much destruction to society and families through their reckless nature.

“We will continue in this work to dismantle these gangs.”

Young is currently incarcerated on the C-Division in maximum security Portlaoise Prison.