Kinahan gang leader Liam Byrne sentenced to five years in prison for firearms offenses – The Irish Times

Kinahan gang leader Liam Byrne, 43, has been sentenced to five years in prison on weapons charges, while his co-accused Thomas Kavanagh, 57, has been sentenced to six years for similar offences.

Both pleaded guilty to weapons charges, while Kavanagh also admitted perverting the course of justice.

The men’s co-suspect, Shaun Kent (38) from Liverpool, was also jailed for six years.

Byrne, originally from Crumlin in Dublin, and his fellow Dubliner and brother-in-law Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh admitted orchestrating a ruse to secure a lighter sentence for Kavanagh in a separate drugs case.

The charges stemmed from a 2020 plot designed to fool Britain’s National Crime Agency into believing that Kavanagh, originally from Dublin but based near Birmingham, had cooperated as part of a ruse to get him a to receive a lighter sentence in a previous case related to drug trafficking.

The gang secretly collected a cache of firearms, including submachine guns and pistols, and buried them near Newry in the north. Kavanagh subsequently approached the NCA in 2020 and 2021 and told officers he was aware of a weapons shipment. He provided a map with an X marking the spot where the guns collected for this purpose would be found.

In carrying out the plot, Kavanagh, who was behind bars, enlisted Kent’s help to deliver messages to other gang members. They communicated via the secure, encrypted messaging service EncroChat, which was later hacked by police and revealed the plot.

Byrne used the EncroChat handle Thai Live and was also called Gargler by gang members, while Kent used the names Firm Cleaner and Marcos Cafu. They mentioned Kavanagh in their posts as Big Head, Pops and Our Mate.

Byrne, whose brother David Byrne was killed in a shooting at Dublin’s Regency hotel in 2016, and Kent purchased the weapons along with other men and arranged their funeral in Newry.

Kavanagh had hoped that by providing information about a weapons shipment, the NCA would tell a judge he was cooperating and he would receive a shorter sentence in his drugs case.

However, the ruse was foiled when French police breached the EncroChat system and sent the gang’s messages to the NCA. Kavanagh was subsequently jailed for 21 years at Ipswich Crown Court on drug charges.

Kavanagh was in fact the British leader of the Kinahan Cartel, while Byrne was its leader in the Republic, although he was described in court as ‘subordinate’ to Kavanagh.

Byrne’s conviction in particular is seen as another milestone in legal efforts to bring down the cartel, which became embroiled in a bloody feud with a rival gang linked to relatives of Gerry Hutch after the murder of David Byrne.

That feud claimed at least eighteen lives, with the vast majority of those killed being people associated with the Hutch side as the Kinahan Cartel tried to wipe out its rival.

During the sentencing hearing, Byrne’s barrister Jeremy Dein KC told the Old Bailey that his client had not been in trouble for “almost a quarter of a century” and had recently suffered emotional distress following the death of his father. Byrne’s brother, David Byrne, was killed during the Regency shooting in Dublin in 2016.

Mr Dein said Liam Byrne was a squirter and “never wants to be in this position again”. He also said he had not seen two of his children since entering Belmarsh prison last summer.

Byrne’s lawyer urged the judge to be lenient with his client, who he said planned to “live a good and honest life when released.”