Kinahan Cartel weapons caretaker agrees to sell home at centre of CAB battle

James Walsh and his ex-partner Lisa O’Hara are both named in a case being taken by CAB against the couple to have the Wheatfield Avenue house in Clondalkin declared the proceeds of crime.

Walsh was convicted of his role in the weapons stash organised by Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh at an industrial unit in Greenogue raid by gardaí in 2016.

Also convicted over the lethal underworld armoury was key Cartel man Declan Brady aka Mr Nobody and Jonathan ‘Rocket Man’ Harding.

This week CAB applied to have an order they previously got to stop the house being sold varied to allow a sale to go ahead.

It was heard that the €340,000 sale was at an advanced stage and Judge Alex Owens changed a previous interim order to allow it to go ahead.

The money left over after the mortgage is paid off is to be held by solicitor and they are prohibited for “disposing of those net profits.”

The house was the scene of garda searches in 2017 following the raid at Greenogue Business park, Rathcoole as gardaí acted in information from their British colleagues investigating Bomber Kavanagh’s drugs gang.

Walsh pleaded guilty in July 2021 at the non-jury Special Criminal Court to laundering €62,000 in crime cash.

Walsh (39) and his former partner Lisa O’Hara had both been charged with a total of 44 money laundering offences, which include using crime cash for a deposit on a house.

He was also charged with stashing €19,000 in a wardrobe at his home.

O’Hara given a suspended sentence, after pleading guilty to multiple counts of laundering more than €100,000 that was the proceeds of crime.

Kinahan firearms caretaker moved from Mountjoy jail after ‘disturbances’ on landing

The Special Criminal Court found that she didn’t know where the money came from but was reckless in not asking questions of her then partner and father of her child.

When the gardaí had raided their home they also found financial documents which showed €136,000 had been lodged in various bank and credit union accounts over a three-year period,

It included a €60,000 cash deposit on the house and another €62,000 in cash paid to a builder for renovations on the house.

Walsh, was serving an eight-year sentence for the weapons offences when he was given another sentence of four years and nine months for money laundering.

O’Hara, who had never been in trouble before, said she presumed Walsh worked every day like she did.

The raid at Greenogue Business Park in Rathcoole came at the height of the Hutch-Kinahan feud in January 2017.

Walsh was standing in the reception area of the industrial unit where gardaí found 15 firearms, including an AK47, and 1,300 rounds of ammunition.

The warehouse had been fitted out to make it look like a legitimate business complete with a fully kitted out reception area.

The unit had been purporting to be the premises of a logistics company, giving the impression it was a legitimate freight business based in the UK.

In the upstairs loft area, a number of loaded firearms were laid out on cardboard on the floor.

There were four loaded revolvers, “ready to be used”, and the AK47 assault weapon.

A transit van with a secret compartment with five rounds of ammunition was also found parked inside, along with a stolen forklift truck, tracker devices and a machine for making vehicle registration plates.

Gardai had launched a surveillance operation after receiving the intelligence about the men and their work at the site.

Declan Brady, known as ‘Mr Nobody’, “supervised and was in overall charge” of the “arsenal”, according to the three-judge Special Criminal Court and was the main target of the garda operation.

They sentenced him to 11-and-a-half years imprisonment with the final year suspended.

Jonathan Harding, known as ‘Rocket Man’, was sentenced to 10 years with one suspended over the haul.