The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) will serve papers on crime boss Daniel Kinahan by registered post after they discovered addresses for him in Dubai from a US Treasury press release.
Shelley Horan BL, acting for CAB, on Thursday told the High Court that in April this year the US Treasury Department issued a press release stating that it had sanctioned the Kinahan organised crime group. In the release, she said, there is a residential and a business address associated with Kinahan in Dubai. CAB has been trying to serve papers on Kinahan since April.
Ms Horan added that Detective Garda Declan Fitzgerald had received information that it is likely to prove "extremely difficult" to serve the papers personally because residences in Dubai tend to be gated communities with manned security desks. Mr Justice Michael MacGrath agreed to permit the papers to be served by registered post. Kinahan will have 35 days to indicate if he intends to defend the proceedings.
Mansfield Jnr
The CAB proceedings were initiated in an attempt to seize property in Dublin linked to Daniel Kinahan and jailed businessman Jim Mansfield Jnr. It is alleged that Daniel Kinahan and an associate, Thomas 'Bomber' Kavanagh, gave Jim Mansfield two suitcases containing €4.5 million, which was to be invested in property for the cartel.
That deal collapsed when Mansfield's finances suffered during the economic downturn, but it is alleged that Mansfield Jnr later reached a deal with the cartel to repay them by giving them a house at Coldwater Lakes in Saggart. At a previous hearing in April CAB said that Kinahan has effectively owned the property since 2014.
He is, Ms Horan said, a crucial party to the proceedings.
Mansfield and his brother Patrick Joseph Mansfield have already consented to an order waiving any claim over the property. Kavanagh was previously served with papers while in prison in the UK.
Property magnate
Last February the Special Criminal Court jailed Jim Mansfield Jnr in an unrelated case for 18 months. The one-time property magnate had ordered the destruction of CCTV footage showing him with a former employee on the morning the employee was kidnapped by republican terrorists Dessie O'Hare and Declan 'Whacker' Duffy.
The court noted that Mansfield Jnr "stood and watched" as his former security guard Martin Byrne was taken by the notorious criminals and "placed in great danger".
Sentencing Mansfield Jnr, presiding judge Mr Justice Alexander Owens said that the defendant had decided to suppress the potential evidence of his involvement with "notorious kidnapper" O'Hare and Duffy and that his actions fell into the category of "foolish and selfish criminality, whose efforts did not succeed".
The three-judge court found that when the convicted man ordered the CCTV footage to be destroyed, he knew there would be a major criminal investigation including an examination of his role in these events.
"He did it to distance himself from any involvement with Declan Duffy and Dessie O'Hare and to hide his association with gangsters," added Mr Justice Owens.
