Who’d want to live in mobster’s seized pad?
Property will be a ‘hard sell’ when it’s put up for auction next month
KINAHAN cartel mobster Ross Browning’s plush countryside pad – seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau – will be a “hard sell” when it goes to auction.
The luxury property Chestnut Lodge in Garristown, North Co Dublin – as well as a brick house, a large warehouse, three stables plus an expansive yard – was taken into the possession as part of a €1.4million case against Browning and several of his family members.
The red-brick house where Browning lived with his partner Sinead Mulhall at the back of the warehouse features an “escape hatch” which was concealed with a hanging carpet.
This hatch led from the house to the warehouse and when officers from the CAB raided the property PLUSH in 2018 a black Honda motorbike was at the foot of the hatch which a senior detective said in an affidavit “was clearly there for Browning’s use”.
Earlier this week we exclusively revealed the property is now for sale by public auction. The online event will take place on May 25 by BRG Gibson Auctions and so far the advert for the property on Daft.ie has received more than 4,000 views.
It has an Advised Minimum Value of €550,000.
Money from the sale will go to the Exchequer and a percentage will go to some of Browning’s family who used their own funds to renovate it.
A source said: “The cottage at the front was extended without planning permission and there were old sheds or hay barns on the grounds of the property which were replaced with the warehouse so the footprint of the warehouse is possibly not the same as the original sheds. The red-brick house and stables at the back of the warehouse were also built without planning permission so potential buyers would have to seek advice over retention permission.
“And the nature of the former owner, Browning, who was named in the High Court as the Kinahan Cartel’s No1 man in Ireland, might put people off purchasing it. But we will have to wait and see what happens at the public auction.”
In his judgment, Judge Alexander Owens said Browning’s mother Julie Conway and her partner ex-garda David O’brien, who had been living in Chestnut Lodge, be allowed part of the proceeds from the sale of the renovated cottage because they had put some of their own money into it.
This included €40,000 borrowed from the Garda Credit Union.