Kinahan guns caretaker back on the streets
A WEAPONS caretaker for the Kinahan cartel is out of prison after serving an eight-year sentence for gun possession, it emerged during a High Court hearing.
James Walsh and his former partner Lisa O’hara are being targeted by the Criminal Assets Bureau for their Clondalkin home.
The bureau claims €60,000 in crime proceeds was used as a deposit on the property as well as a builder being paid €62,000 in cash for renovation work.
However, during the hearing on Wednesday, the court was informed that despite Walsh being released from prison, “it is unclear whether anyone is living in the house”.
The property on
Wheatfield Avenue is worth €350,000, the
High Court heard last year.
The pair had consented to an interim order made by the court to permit the sale of the house. But in
December it was told this had fallen through.
On Wednesday, Mr Justice Alexander Owens was informed the sale of the property is now due to close on Friday with defence counsel seeking the current motion be altered to allow this.
However, the judge said the evidence of the proposed sale has to be put in an affidavit. He adjourned the case until Friday for a motion seeking the approval of the sale.
Walsh was described as a “trusted lieutenant” of the Kinahan cartel in the Special Criminal Court in 2018.
He was sentenced to eight years in prison for firearms offences arising from a raid on the Kinahan cartel’s secret weapons depot in January 2017. Two years ago both Walsh and
O’hara were convicted of laundering more than €100,000 of proceeds of crime after they admitted the offences.
Walsh, who also has an address at Neilstown Drive in Clondalkin, was sentenced to six years and nine months in prison with the final two years suspended for the money laundering. O’hara was given a suspended sentence.
The total cash involved in that case was €136,861. It was either found during the search of Walsh’s home or was lodged in various bank accounts between 2015 and 2017.
The Special Criminal Court found in 2021 that O’hara did not know where the money came from but was reckless in not asking questions of her then partner and father of her child.
That court also heard O’hara had since split with Walsh and had “nothing whatsoever to do with” him.
Walsh first came to Garda attention following a raid on January 24, 2017 on the Kinahan cartel’s secret weapons depot in Greenogue Industrial Estate. A submachine gun, rifles, semiautomatic pistols and a significant amount of ammunition were seized.
He pleaded guilty the following year at the Special Criminal Court to the possession of nine revolvers, four pistols, a submachine gun, an assault rifle, a silencer, 10 magazines and
1,335 rounds of ammunition.
That court heard the Kinahan cartel had kitted out the warehouse to make it look like a branch of a legitimate UK logistics company complete with a full reception area.
Two other men were also jailed in connection with the raid.