This is Thomas 'Bomber' Kavanagh on a boozy celebration in New York along with one of his lieutenants and the Kinahan cartel’s main logistics man.
The Irish Mirror can reveal for the first time the snap of Kavanagh, Gary Vickery and Declan ‘Mr Nobody’ Brady. At the time, a merry Vickery declared it was “worth the money” in a Whatsapp message.
Just over two months after this snap was taken in November 2016, a major garda operation in Dublin would bring down Daniel Kinahan’s mob in the UK and Ireland.
READ MORE: Thomas 'Bomber' Kavanagh 'smuggled €700m worth of drugs into Ireland and UK' in 10-year crime spree
The celebration in the Big Apple took place after Kavanagh’s gang had sent the first two of 23 cocaine and cannabis shipments worth an overall €36m to the UK.
Also present on the night was Kavanagh's father-in-law James “Jaws” Byrne, whose son David was blasted to death by the Hutch gang at the Regency Hotel the previous February.
Kavanagh, the cartel’s Number 2, was the “figurehead” of a crime gang which based itself in England but whose operations also stretched across seven countries.
Below him in the pecking order was Vickery, who carried out day-to-day operations and passed orders onto his brother-in-law, 43-year-old Daniel Canning.
This week Kavanagh, Vickery and Canning were sentenced to over 60 years between them for drug trafficking.
During the investigation by the UK’s National Crime Agency, they uncovered the picture from Vickery’s phone.
Kavanagh’s lieutenant sent the image to his wife Nicola O’Connor with the caption: “Haha this is worth the money.”
Two months later, the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau raided a unit at Greenogue industrial estate in Dublin in January 2017.
Logistics chief ‘Mr Nobody’ Brady was among those caught in the bust, which uncovered nine revolvers, four semi-automatic pistols, a submachine gun, an assault rifle and 1,355 rounds of ammunition, and €3m worth of heroin in a later search.
Brady was later sentenced to 11.5 years and has since been hit with a further seven years for money laundering on behalf of the cartel. Documents seized at the unit that time were passed by gardai to the NCA, leading them to a transport firm in the British midlands linked to Vickery, Canning and another Irishman, Martin Byrne.
A surveillance operation followed and in October 2017, the NCA swooped on a warehouse in Dover. There, they seized 15kg of cocaine and more than 220kg of cannabis, which were hidden inside a six-tonne industrial tarmac removal machine.
Other premises were raided and more seizures followed. When cops raided Vickery, Canning and Byrne’s homes, their communications were key in identifying their boss as Kavanagh. Byrne would have been prosecuted but he died during the NCA probe from lung cancer.
The messages cops recovered gave an insight of how the gang operated, with Kavanagh mostly communicating to Vickery, who passed on the message to Canning.
Vickery also kept his wife updated and in one Whatsapp he informed her he had just met with Kavanagh ahead of their first shipment in 2016.
He wrote: “Hey I’ve one and 1/4 vodkas, gonna finish them soon and jump in taxi. havin good needed chat with gaffer, love you.”
Messages between Kavanagh and Vickery also highlighted their access to cash. In one exchange in May 2017, Kavanagh asks via Whatsapp: “Mate have you any euros??”
When Vickery informs him he has “600/700”, Kavanagh replies: “Need about 7000.” Vickery says he’ll make a call before informing Kavanagh: “Have those yoyos mate 7.”
In encrypted messages, Kavanagh was known as “The Gaffer” or “Plasma”, while “Jelly” was the nickname for Vickery and “Smiley” for Canning.
“Paper” was reference to cash, “phones” were cocaine, “jackets” is the codeword used for packages of flowering head cannabis, “hot” for Spain and “the flat” for Netherlands.
Although Canning was bottom of the chain, he regularly flew to Spain to organise shipments.
On one occasion he did, Vickery asks Kavanagh: “Mate are we throwin Smiley a drink for the 2 times he went hot to give out money and for goin today to sort things.”
Kavanagh replied: “He will b rewarded mate but just leave for now not good time 2 b sort money.”
Although the NCA made just one seizure in Dover in October 2017, they were able to connect the gang to 22 previous ones back to October 2016. Kavanagh, Canning and Vickery all admitted conspiring to import class A and B drugs, and money laundering. Canning also admitted possessing a firearm and ammunition.
And on Monday at Ipswich Crown Court, Kavanagh was hit with the hardest sentence of the three Dubliners of 21 years in prison, while Canning was jailed for 19.5 years, and Vickery got a 20 years.
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