Loyalist gives up assets to SOCA
A former associate of the murdered UDA leader Jim Gray is to hand over a house and the contents of eight bank accounts to the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
Loyalist Thomas Gary Matthews, of Dixon Park Road in Bangor, agreed to settle SOCA’s civil recovery claim on Friday.
SOCA had claimed that Mr Matthews and his wife Lucinda had derived the majority of their assets “through money laundering and false accounting”.
It also alleged Mr Matthews had been involved in extortion and blackmail.
The PSNI originally referred the case to the Assets Recovery Agency – which preceded SOCA – in 2007 .
In September of that year, property and bank accounts belonging to the couple, which were valued at £336,000, were frozen by the High Court.
More than two years on, the case has been brought to a close after 48-year-old Mr Matthews said he would relinquish a residential property in Bangor and the contents of eight bank accounts to SOCA.
The late UDA leader Jim Gray, also known as the “Brigadier of Bling“, was lifting weights out of Mr Matthews’ car in east Belfast when he was shot dead in October 2005.
