Mm-hmm.

But he talked about, like, he spent three, three of those four weeks in an induced coma, which caused him, I suppose, the, the, the, the muscles to contract, and he couldn't hold, uh, he couldn't hold a cup.

He couldn't walk properly.

He couldn't open a bottle for, for almost eight months, walking with a frame.

Like, he's, they've, the, because of the fear they're in, they had to sell the home they'd been in since the 1980s.

And he's moved, he's moved out to, to, uh, the UK.

He's only come back three times now.

Mm

Eamon, what's in this plan as far as you know from the government, and what's your take?

Um, well, I'm gl- I'm glad that they're looking at it.

Um, I mean, it's, it's a massive issue.

I think in terms of, um, you know, this is where the criminal gangs get their money in the first place to, uh, continue investing in drugs and in serious criminality, so anything that kind of makes it more expensive for them to do business is gonna be good.

I mean, they're, they're, they're constantly looking at different ways of, of, you know, funneling money through the system to try and legitimize it, to integrate in, with, uh, normal businesses.

Um, and while they might may be using high-tech, uh, I suppose, platforms now, like cryp- you know, with cryptocurrency transactions, they're still using, you know, you know, techniques like smurfing, which, you know, an awful lot, you know, where, you know, dozens of people lodge, you know, small amounts of money that aren't gonna, uh, trigger red flag money laundering, uh, guidelines and, uh, and they're able to move millions around.

Um, and it's, and, and it's, it's, it's, the traffic is both ways in Ireland.

And how is Ireland viewed as a money laundering center? Uh, what, what sort of reputation do we have internationally amongst criminal organizations or indeed terrorist organizations?

Yeah

... uh, Michael Gobins, who's the chief officer of the Criminal Assets Bureau.

So he was basically saying they're, this is, this is all directly linked to the Cartu brothers- Through a man called, uh, Jonathan French or Jonathan Zarfati, who was- when they found Sarper's phones, and the guards analyzed this, there was, there was conversations with him on Signal, on WhatsApp.

There was text messaging going on.

Um, and so they, uh, Sarper had bought a, an apartment in Swords, uh, for 208,000, 192,000 of which was from unexplained sources.

And then there was also a bank account that he controlled, which there was 340,000 left in, which 2.24 million had gone through.

You'd have asked where they are.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm

... for refueling, which on, for McGovern's case, it was, uh, a stop in Cyprus and then in France on the way back to Ireland.

Um, and then at Baldonnell, uh, like, he, he...

That- that's where kind of, I suppose, the Irish on-the-ground security would've kicked in, would've been at obviously the various armed response units, the ERU, and so on, uh, would've been kind of in, in, uh, I, I suppose, a, a close, tight operation to bring him to the Special Criminal Court, which of course is always reasonably well-secured.

Um, and, uh, you know, it, that, that's, that's what will happen then.

I mean, it'll be...

His, his initial appearance in the, in the Special Criminal Court, if, if he's brought back, will probably be, you know, it, it would be quite short.

How significant is this for the Gardaí? I mean, they've been waiting for this for a long time.

Yes.

Um, and certainly then in, in Portlaoise, I mean, he'll go through the, the typical reception, like, you know, there'll be, you know, a medical check he'll be given.

You know, he's allowed to keep three sets of clothes.

Um, uh, you know, he'll be given his, his, his basic kit, like, you know, a toothbrush or whatever and things like that.

I mean, he'll be able to eventually, people can put money into his tuckshop for him-

Yes

... you know.

And, like, I remember speaking to a former member of the Office of Foreign Assets Confiscation, or what, Control, um, a, a chap called, uh, Conor O'Brien, I think his name was.

He can see that, and he can sort of start to gather around him a gang o- of pals that are from his neighborhood and are gonna be loyal.

Yeah, like a lot of people, when Marlowe Highland came out of prison, he'd already built up some of the contacts there, but he came out into a different world where the drugs trade had exploded, and the people controlling that drugs trade were John Gilligan and his gang.

And Marlowe Highland, uh, had, had built up some of those connections in prison and They started becoming, his gang started becoming one of the distributors for those drugs.

He was particularly close to a guy called Noel Mullen, who had connections with the John Gilligan gang.

Noel Mullen, in October 1997, was caught with 400,000 pounds worth of hash.

And in those years, Marlowe Highland had gone from maybe being a, a, a client of Noel Mullen's to being maybe somebody who was directing him at that stage.

In his dealings with the, the Gardai, Marlowe Highland, while he could be very sociable with the criminals, he was very aggressive with Gardai.

Download it today and find your outside.

So central to this Double Cross were two brothers, the Ryans, Ciaran, Rashers Ryan, and Eds Ryan.

Yeah, so their father, Eddie Ryan Sr., had been murdered in the Moose Bar in 2000, and that had s- sparked a lot of the feuding that occurred in Limerick.

Um, and at that time, things were very tense.

The Ryan and the Keane clans were in direct conflict, and, uh, during, d- in the middle of all this, there was this reported abduction, um, of the two brothers, uh, Ciaran and E- and Eddie Ryan.

Ciaran better known as Rashers.

Um, the word had got out to the Gardai that they had been abducted.

Now, ultimately, it is believed that they faked their own abduction.

So all of a sudden, this web of betrayal is getting even bigger, and while the Dundons never fully leave my mind as part of this, you do have to wonder, was the double cross? Were they somehow involved in setting up Robbie Lawler, or did they double-cross others with an opportunism to make money?

For Gardai, who believed that they had finally stemmed the killings in the Hutch and Kinahan feud at the start of 2018, the double murders were a huge blow, but it didn't take long for them to suspect Bomber's back channel moves in brokering the hits.

A measure of Bomber Kavanagh and his ability to use any circumstances to his own end has to be what happened in regarding the murder of Antoinette Corbelli Devoy, Derek Butler Devoy's sister.

So she was shot pretty much by accident in an attempt to kill Butler.

Jason Buddha Molyneux was blamed on that.

And Bomber Kavanagh, who at the time was like a lot of his people were very much caught up and under surveillance and he wasn't really able to do much, saw it as an opportunity.

So they went to Butler and they sort of offered him that logistical support should he want to, you know, go back after Molyneux.

Of course, a Hutch associate.

100%, Steve fucking set it up.

But the, the Byrnes and, and particular Bomber Kavanagh, of course, he was living in England, he didn't care.

No, I think there was one reason why it started coming to people's attention is because not the, the main players themselves, like Liam Byrne or, or Bomber Kavanagh, they weren't showing it all off on social media.

It was the people around them were starting to live this, uh, glamorized lifestyle out on, on Facebook and Instagram, and it, it was stunning when you saw some of the wealth.

They also were driving these in- incredible, uh, incredibly expensive cars, and they thought they had found a loophole really, didn't they? Where these cars were in theory leased, but they were, they were beneficially owned by the criminals, but they thought they'd found this legal leepo- loophole where they could drive these cars, but say, "I don't own that.

I'm just renting that out." So they were unrestrained.

Um, a lot of the time, any family, uh, events like a christening, wedding, com- first c- Holy Communion, these were incredibly lavish events.

Um, I attended outside of one of them.

Wiretaps later revealed the chilling truth about who ordered the murder.

How did this happen?

It, well, I suppose it's, it's one end of one of their tentacles.

It was such a, um, a sophisticated scam.

They had, you know, layers and layers of companies registered in different jurisdictions, you know, from, you, uh, you know, all, all sorts of countries, the different, um, uh, tax havens like the US Virgin Islands and, you know, uh, uh, the Caribbean, Bermuda, places like that, but also in Ireland as well.

And there was so much money sloshing around.

They would've employed people who wouldn't necessarily initially have known that they were working for what was essentially a criminal operation.

They, they would've thought that this was a genuine financial company, and people were brought in as coders, or they were brought in to, to deal with, you know, customer care and this sort of thing, and thought they were working in, in a, in a normal environment until, of course, there was some of these, uh, stories about some of the Irish crew being brought out on a, a staff weekend to Berlin where 25,000 was paid in entertainment in a strip joint, and people were given sort of three rounds of Johnnie Walker Blue Label whiskey.

[laughs]

Yeah.

And, uh, and, um, uh, some of the surrounding areas, like Buckinghamshire, and Surrey, and all the rest of it.

So they, they were, y- you know, they were, they were d- they were going at it pretty hard, let's say.

Um, and there, there was 10 counts of burglary, um, and attempted burglary, uh, brought against, uh, these guys.

Now, the others all pleaded guilty to basically two counts.

Uh, but Gary Ward, uh, due to the fact that he had his mobile phone with him, um, at a, at, at these various raids, uh, ended up pleading guilty to, to, um, multiple charges, unlike the others.

But at the same time, there was no evidence that he was the organizer of this, this gang.

Yeah

Yeah

... who is, this is the guy, um, who ended up, uh, getting a, a long, you know, getting a long sentence for serious crimes, including murder in, in Holland.

So that was basically, they were using that as a, a, a safe house for, you know, a senior member of the Mocro Mafia.

So you're talking about, y- you know, this is at the height of, I suppose, the, the, uh, international partnership between the Kinahan cartel and the Mocro Mafia and, and the Balkans guys and all of this.

This is, you know, r- we're in 2017.

You have the famous wedding at Burj Al Arab, you know, Daniel Kinahan's wedding.

So this is at the height, I suppose, of their powers, and they're, they're, they're using all the resources as this crazy feud is going on.

Yeah

He's been to jail, he's o- gonna be on the sex offenders register, and there's sort of strict conditions to his release, but he hasn't actually physically harmed a woman.

No. Um, and it was a very bizarre and very disturbing case, and what he actually char- was charged with was, uh, possession and distribution of child pornography, or what we now call, um, child sexual abuse images.

So, uh, I mean, and this was based on these huge, long letters that he wrote in great grisly, gory detail, and had, um, pictures cut out from, um, pornographic magazines and from local newspapers of, of, you know, innocent people.

And the- these are all put together, like, in, you know, in, in, uh, as I said, in a, in a, in a long, long passages, you know, um, A4 pages, 20 pages long, like, uh, tightly written.

And some of these were sent to Garda stations in, in, uh, Offaly and in Westmeath.

I think one was sent to, uh, an, a third-level institution, and then there was some also sent to a, a girls' school-

Mm

... that's his nine years completed.

Mm-hmm

... who can't be named.

Uh, and this, this person ended up be- becoming the subject of all these threats, and his mother was dragged into it as well, and all these, these kind of nasty threats were made.

There was another, another, um, gentleman as well who had this, you know, random and alleged drug debt kind of, you know, lodged against him by Salmon.

His family went through the same process as well.

Like, his mother was, was, was, um, threatened and kind of forced to pass on the threats, I suppose, and, you know-

Mm.

You know? Um, the, the only other part was that it was mentioned that there was an incident when he was 13.

How was his, how did he react?

Well, he, he, as usual, he had his, uh, Sudoku books, it looked like, and he had a different kind of n- non-puzzle book with him this time.

And I think the last time, we had, um, 1984, George Or- Orwell, which I suppose was, as I mentioned in one of the piece I wrote, it kind of suited his bosses, Daniel Kinahan's double-speak and love of trying to create a false narrative.

Uh, this time it was something a bit, it was a Roman history book.

It was about one of the emperors.

Couldn't quite see the title.

He was in and out.

So Eamon, what did he do, and what did these messages show us?

Mm

... you know, who've been part and parcel of the whole underground scene in, at the, in, in Limerick city for all the time we're talking about, that this has been ongoing.

You know, it's probably the Collopys being involved in some of the violence, even kicked off the feud really back from the mid-'90s.

So like, it would have been said in a previous, the cab case against Jethro, that, um, Barry Sheehy, uh, would have been collated with Ray Collopy over the years.

And there was times he was stopped by gardaís, um, and he was with Ray Collopy in the car.

Um, he was previously convicted for the s- sa- sale and supply of drugs, a stash of cannabis.

Now, this is going back some time to 2001 for €40,000, and he got a four-year sentence for that.

Yeah

Mm

... uh, from the, uh, uh, you know, from w- what came out in, in Sean Little's, uh, CAB case.

And that's what I, it was going back to, like, so that, that was taken against the people who would've, I suppose, had an entitlement to his, uh, to both Parker and Little.

Anyone who had any entitlement to, to their assets that were seized, which in this case was their parents.

There, there was no will.

They had no interest in, in coming forward to claim these jet skis and, and, uh, uh, a, a boat that was seized by the guards, which they had discovered when they were investigating Parker's murder, first of all.

Um, and there was a number of people mentioned.

Knocks around with, with Conor McGregor, amongst others.

Mm

... into thinking they're getting, you know, a, a, a new engine or a, or a, or a conditioned secondhand engine, or this kind of thing.

Um, and, and uh, there's various amounts of money involved.

Um, when they, w- when the guards raided, i- in, I think it was in the early 2019, or, or, sorry, it was in late 2018 when they raided, uh, uh, two, two of these kind of properties where they found all this machinery and bits and pieces, and the, the figure was, like, something like 670,000 euro worth of, of stuff [laughs] that was basically there.

So, like, it was, it was quite a sophisticated operation.

It wasn't a small-time, um, a, a little bit here and a bit there.

It wa- it was an industrial, sophisticated operation where they had their contacts in the UK.

Mm.

Of course, he, he doesn't really look the part, does he, when he comes to court, Eamon? Tell us a bit about what Mark Salmon is being convicted of.

Yeah, well, he, I mean, he appeared in court.

It's the first time I'd, I'd seen him.

Um, he appears, um, in February as well when he first pleaded guilty to a, le- the lesser charges.

He was originally charged with directing a criminal organization, which can, you know, uh, attract as much as a life sentence.

But th- these are lesser charges.

They were, um, making threats to kill, um, uh, trafficking cocaine, and, uh, money laundering.

Yeah

And he's trying to, I suppose, get at what, what, what McGovern's role is and maybe trying to situate him as a, a lesser light.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And, and so he, he was asking, he was asking the detective sergeant to kind of, um, confirm certain things about the fingerprint evidence and, and marks on a document.

These were all found in the, in the apartment at the, the south quarter in The Beacon, uh, which was raided in April that year, or, uh, or April the following year.

Um, and he, he, he was asking to confirm certain things like, you know, there was a document, right? And this is the ins- instruction leaflet to a tracker.

Yeah.

Because again, like a lot of these people, he really stayed under the medi- the media and the Garda radar for a long time.

Yeah.

I, I mean, it, it turns out now, as, as we've discovered more and more, he is one of the senior figures in the, in the Kinahan cartel at this time in, you know, late 2016, early, early, um, 2017.

Now he went into custody in January 2017, uh, from, as a result of a tip-off from the National Crime Agency in the UK.

Um, and he was caught in connection with 17 guns that were found in a, in a, an industrial unit in Greenogue, and he was the person that was kind of given the impression that this was the legitimate office or a, an office of a legitimate haulage company, uh, from the UK who actually didn't have an office in Ireland.

So they were, they were kind of, I suppose, hiding in plain sight.

Um, so he- he's been in custody since then.

Yeah.

Mm

... theme running through it, and the website describes him, you know, the company website describes him as a devout Christian.

Uh, he, he's, uh, uh, he's of Moldovan extraction but living in Navan in County Meath.

So Buriani's role in, in this seems to m- be very much as an intermediary between, um, uh, Sweeney and Nathan Kinsela, and that some of these vehicles and other vehicles that were, were bought through either one of his companies, you know, but essentially they, they were able to show that Buriani was the owner of the car or, you know, it was one of his firms that had, had bought these cars from different kind of-

Yeah

...

Owens.

And we're not really sure why he was there.

Now-

At this, at this stage then, I mean, they more or less, uh, that, that kind of brought most of that kind of evidence from, um, Detective Superintendent, uh, Gallagher to an end.

Um, uh, part of it then was kind of formal evidence where he's giving his, his, uh, kind of his CV.

So again, this is usually to kind of, I suppose, to boost the, the, the power of his evidence.

So he's explaining, you know, his 32 years experience, um, his knowledge of gangs and the experience he's acquired, and he's satisfied that the Kinahan, um, organized crime gang is an entity as such.

And he, he, he talks about having this hierarchical structure and the sub-cells where I suppose we spoke about some of this.

Um, he talks about the, the senior leadership operating at a very high level.

Um-

Yeah.

From the National Drugs and Organized Crime.

Um, a- and a, a part of, I suppose he had to give evidence that there was such a thing called a, the Kinahan organized crime a- gang, and at one point gave a very kind of quick rundown on the various kind of tiers, and you had different cells and sub-cells who had different jobs, whether it was cars or guns or drugs, and then people were being directed, like a leadership person within those cells would be direct from someone above them, who again might report to someone further up the chain.

So, so you, you were, you, you got this idea of, of, um, you know, how they were, how the overall gang, the overall cartel was working without necessarily the other parts of it knowing what the other was doing.

Mm.

So there were kind of, there were, there was a discussion, like, was that where Gately might be hiding at the moment? Um, so I mean, it, it really wasn't clear.

Um, like, they found, like, th- they were able to find the evidence then on, on, um, I think it was, uh, it was, it was Keating's phone.

Um, and McGovern had actually sent him a, a photograph of the different details of the various trackers in case his own ph- phone broke so that he'd still be able to, to get access to them.

Yeah.

So O- O'Brien originally moved to the US in the summer of 2021, and, you know, he, he was, uh, uh, I suppose he was putting it out there, like, you know, when he's questioned, yeah, but he was out to kind of make a better life for himself and his family.

But from the very beginning, they were saying that everything he did was based on deceit and exploitation, and it, it, it, it was, um, it was in, I think the, the dates where they got all the evidence was from April '24 to March '25.

So all, so all of the victims that were used in this case to convict him, that got him his 56 months, was, was based from that, from that, um-

Mm

... to, to ensure the, you know, their best interests are, are kind of being looked after.

And I mean, certainly, i- in, in, in O'Brien's case and similar cases, like, I mean, he has said that, you know, a lot of this is, is over, um, i- i- it's, it's kind of overstated by the prosecution that this idea of, uh, you know, the, the traveling f- the, the, you know, the traveling con man fraud group is overstated, that, you know, it's a lot of different individuals.

They're not necessarily working together, and, you know, suggests as well that some of the, some of the, uh, I s- I suppose the, the, the belief evidence that's put forward in the indictments was, was overreaching.