Kinahan cartel bosses set to learn their fate in English court over bizarre guns plot

Liam Byrne and Thomas “Bomber” Kavanagh are due to be sentenced at the Old Bailey Court in London on Monday

Two senior Kinahan cartel leaders are expected to learn their fate – after they admitted their role in a bizarre firearms conspiracy in England.

Liam Byrne and Thomas “Bomber” Kavanagh are due to be sentenced at the Old Bailey Court in London on Monday – and run the risk of being locked up for a decade or more. The Dubliners pleaded guilty in August to their roles in a plot to deliberately mislead the UK’s National Crime Agency. Brothers-in-law Byrne, 43, and Kavanagh, 57, had been due to stand trial on the charges but pleaded guilty at the last minute.

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Kavanagh, who was once named in the High Court by gardai as being “at the top of the tree” of the Kinahan cartel, admitted putting together a plan to have his associates hide a stache of firearms - so that he could pretend to cooperate, help officers find the weapons, and then secure himself a lesser prison sentence.

The criminal, who lived in a mansion in Tamworth near Birmingham, was at the time of the plot facing trial for conspiring to import €36 million worth of drugs into the UK - a charge for which he was later convicted and sentenced to 21 years in prison.

He now runs the risk of being hit with a life sentence on top of that jail term after pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice in this latest case. And Liam Byrne – at one stage considered to be the leader of the Kinahan cartel’s operations in Ireland and the UK, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess the prohibited weapons and ammunition which were ultimately found in a farmer's field in Co Down. Byrne faces a maximum penalty of up to 10 years for each conspiracy charge.

Kavanagh, Byrne and others hatched a plot to lure officers to 11 weapons - including three Skorpion submachine guns, three Heckler and Koch, and Uzi submachine gun and ammunition. Kavanagh desperately hoped that the NCA would fall for the plot, in which he offered to help them find the weapons ahead of his trial over the €36M worth of drugs. But the plan was foiled when incriminating encrypted conversations on ‘Encrochat’ were cracked in April 2020 - and revealed how his associates conspired to plant the weapons in a desperate bid to secure him a lighter prison sentence.

In an interview with the NCA in 2021 Kavanagh tried to claim to officers that he had intelligence about an arms cache of between 10 and 20 weapons, said to have come from Holland. He even provided a map with instructions and an X marking a particular spot in Newry. The PSNI ultimately investigated the claims and found buried two holdalls containing the guns and ammunition.

In August, Kavanagh, Byrne and co-accused man Shaun Kent all admitted to two charges of conspiring to possess a prohibited weapon, and two charges of conspiring to possess prohibited ammunition, between January 9 2020 and June 3 2021.

Kavanagh and Kent also admitted conspiring with others to pervert the course of justice. The charge said that they plotted to "possess firearms and thereafter to hide them and then reveal their whereabouts to the National Crime Agency to enable Thomas Kavanagh to receive a reduced sentence on Operation Hornstay with intent to pervert the course of justice". The guilty pleas came just one day before the men were set to go on trial before a jury in a case that was expected to last up to eight weeks.

Byrne was considered by gardai to be a major player in the Kinahan cartel and was out for revenge when his brother David was shot and killed by the Hutch gang in the lobby of Dublin’s Regency Hotel in February 2016.

Following his brother’s killing Byrne demanded that the Kinahan mob strike back - with the gang going on a ruthless murder spree in response. Both Byrne and Kavanagh were close confidantes of cartel boss Daniel Kinahan, 47.

Kinahan faces his own problems now after Ireland agreed an extradition treaty with the United Arab Emirates, where he and his father Christy, 67, and brother Christopher, 43, are holed up. That deal, which could be signed imminently, means it is more likely the trio will be sent back to Ireland to face gangland charges that could see them locked up for life.There is now increased speculation the trio will flee Dubai before the net closes around them – possibly to Iran or Russia.

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