The task force aims to clamp down on organised crime

Alan McQuillan will be a keynote speaker on the second day of an international conference on crime in Belfast on Thursday.

His comments follow a police statement saying up to 700 people were involved in organised crime in Northern Ireland with racketeering and extortion earning paramilitaries more than �125m a year.

Mr McQuillan said the Assets Recovery Agency was currently working on just seven cases but stressed that the body's work was at an early stage.

He said: "They involve paramilitaries who are very heavily involved in managing the finances of their organisations and they involve some ordinary criminals too.

"We have to carry out an investigation into the people so at the moment we are going through those covert financial investigations.

"We are preparing complete financial profiles for individuals with their bank accounts, their money and houses, their tax affairs and any information about any other sources of income they have."

Operation halted

On Thursday, police in Northern Ireland released details of an operation with their counterparts in the Irish Republic that led to the seizure of fake Manchester United and Liverpool shirts with an estimated value of �1.3m.

Fake Manchester United and Liverpool shirts were seized

They said the seizure resulted in the halting of a major counterfeiting operation between Ireland and Turkey - a success likely to be highlighted at the crime conference.

The government's Organised Crime Task Force is behind the three-day event which looks at tackling such criminality and those who profit from a range of money making rackets including illegal fuel, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, counterfeit clothing, DVDs and cash.

The police estimate there are 85 criminal gangs in Northern Ireland, two thirds of whom are linked to paramilitaries.

The believe the IRA takes in between �5m and �8m a year, the dissident Real IRA nets about �5m, the UDA gets �3m, the LVF �2m and the UVF �1.5m through rackets and extortion.

Among those attending the Belfast conference are representatives from law enforcement agencies, the intelligence community, representatives from the criminal justice sector as well as academics and prosecutors.

The Northern Ireland Organised Crime Task Force was established in September 2000 to provide the strategic direction for a multi-agency approach to tackling organised crime.