The Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) is pursuing Daniel Kinahan, Jim Mansfield Jnr and Thomas 'Bomber' Kavanagh as part of an assets confiscation case.
Mansfield Jnr, who is currently in prison, is understood to be the primary target in the case, with a number of other people named as respondents, including Kinahan and Kavanagh.
The Cab case, which is seeking to confiscate assets, has been ongoing for well over a year but has remained secret.
The case is the first time Daniel Kinahan (44) has been named as a respondent in a Cab investigation. It is understood the case will get its first substantive public airing in the High Court in Dublin next month.
Kinahan is currently in Dubai and Kavanagh is in the UK, where he is in prison.
While the full detail of the case has not yet been outline in court, it is understood the action centres on property owned by Mansfield and sum of money he is also alleged to own and which Cab is trying to seize.
In January businessman Mansfield Jnr was found guilty of perverting the course of justice by ordering the destruction of CCTV footage showing him with his former employee Martin Byrne on the morning that Mr Byrne was kidnapped by well-known criminals and INLA figures Dessie O'Hare and Declan 'Whacker' Duffy. Mansfield was jailed for 18 months last month and is currently serving that sentence.
The 54-year-old was acquitted by the Special Criminal Court of a separate charge of conspiracy to falsely imprison Mr Byrne, who had previously provided security for the family business.
The court found that although Mansfield had knowingly involved O’Hare and Duffy in his attempts to recover assets lost in the 2008 economic crash, there was insufficient evidence to show Mansfield knew the two men planned to kidnap Mr Byrne.
Organised crime group
Kavanagh (53) is a member of the Byrne organised crime group, whose leadership was based in Dublin and which has been linked to the Kinahan cartel for almost two decades. He lived in Tamworth, outside Birmingham, where Kinahan cartel founder Christy Kinahan first settled when he left Ireland. While regarded as a key cog in the Dublin-based Byrne crime group, he also has the ear of the Dubai-based leadership of the Kinahan cartel.
In September 2019, Kavanagh was jailed in England for possession of a 10,000 volt stun gun at his Birmingham home. He is currently awaiting sentencing in the UK after pleading guilty to his role in a conspiracy to import class A and B drugs worth approximately €30 million.
Daniel Kinahan has been named by the Garda in court actions as a key gangland figure in Ireland. In 2019, when Cab concluded a case against Liam Byrne (41), Crumlin, the bureau told the High Court that Byrne was a lieutenant of Daniel Kinahan.
The bureau also told the court at the time the Kinahan cartel was engaged in a feud with the Hutch organised crime group. The evidence put by Cab before the High Court named Daniel Kinahan as one of two leaders of the Kinahan cartel.
Cab added that Byrne was the leader of what the bureau called the Byrne organised crime group, linked to the Kinahan organised crime group, and was living in Birmingham after his house and business in Dublin were confiscated.
The affidavit evidence also said Daniel Kinahan and his brother Christopher Jnr (40) had assumed control of the criminal cartel their father, Christy Kinahan (66), began.
"The Byrne organised crime group originated in Dublin but now has interests in Spain, the Netherlands, South America and Dubai," an unpublished ruling of the High Court stated three years ago. "It was previously led and directed by Christopher Kinahan snr, an Irish citizen who left Ireland to live in Spain and direct the operations of the group from that jurisdiction. It would appear that Mr Kinahan is now resident in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and that the day-to-day operations of his drug trafficking are managed and controlled by his sons, Christopher jnr and Daniel Kinahan."
