SENIOR Kinahan cartel member Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh is set to lose his €1m mansion. Investigators from the National Crime Agency will present their ‘proceeds of crime’ investigation before a UK court in the new year . The case against the kingpin, 56, was taken after he received a 21-year-jail term for running a €36m drug smuggling operation in 2022.
Kavanagh was hit with the weapons charge after he tried to secure a lesser prison sentence for the drugs by offering up the weapons. When he provided the locations of the firearms, the NCA charged him and his brother in law Liam Byrne with firearms offences. Both men pleaded guilty this week and will be sentenced over the smuggling plot next month.
But the move to take Kavanagh’s home in Tamworth, €40,000 in cash and €250,000 worth of jewellery was delayed after he was charged with smuggling firearms. The NCA said how it was their belief that Kavanagh “ran his criminal empire” from the property . Now that he has pleaded guilty to the firearms offences, the focus will now switch to stripping him of his assets in the UK.
One investigator told us: “Thomas Kavanagh wasn’t going anywhere so there was no rush with the proceeds of crime case. “But when he receives his sentence for the firearms next month, attention will switch to his assets. “All of the assets that he obtained through criminality will be identified and targeted.
“Kavanagh thought he could continue his operations in the UK but great coop.