TWO Kinahan cartel leaders have pleaded guilty to a ruse to dupe British cops into believing the pair had cooperated in uncovering a weapons stash.
Dubliners Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh, 57, and brother-in-law Liam Byrne, 44, are famed for being senior operators in the notorious Irish mafia that set up shop on the Costa del Sol last decade.
During their heyday the Kinahan clan were running Spain’s largest cocaine ring and brought a level of violence and brutality to Spain’s streets that had not been seen previously.
Along with scouser Shaun Kent, 38, the trio were facing a string of charges in London’s Old Bailey Criminal Court in a trial that was due to commence imminently.
But in a dramatic last minute mea culpa, all three pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to possess a prohibited weapon between January 9th 2020 and June 3rd 2021.
They also admitted two charges of conspiring to possess prohibited ammunition, while Kavanagh and Kent pleaded guilty to conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
When facing a lengthy spell behind bars in 2020 for trafficking cocaine and weed into the UK, Kavanagh came up with a scheme to fool Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) into reducing his sentence.
With a helping hand from Byrne and Kent, they stashed an arsenal of illegal firearms, including three Skorpion submachine guns, three Heckler and Koch, an Uzi submachine gun and ammunition from the UK, the Netherlands and Republic of Ireland.
The plan was to reveal its location to the NCA and earn a commendation from the crime fighting agency to the judge in their trial.
The Irishman approached the NCA in December 2020 indicating that he could help them uncover this armoury.
In an interview in April 2021 he told them in person about the weapons cache and even provided them with a map and an ‘X’ marking the spot in Northern Ireland.
Local police followed the map and found themselves in a field, where they started digging.
Indeed, as Kavanagh had promised, the police found a pair of holdalls containing the 10 to 20 weapons plus ammunition supposedly smuggled in from the Netherlands.
However, the previous April French police had tipped off their British counterparts of Kavanagh’s scheme after they cracked the encrypted EncroChat system the crooks used to coordinate their activities.
Having examined the communications between the Kinahan operatives further, the NCA spotted the ruse and withdrew all cooperation.
The charge against Kavanagh, Byrne and Kent 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.’
In March 2022, Kavanagh was sentenced to 21 years in prison at Ipswich Crown Court.
The trio have been remanded in custody until sentencing on October 21.
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