Kinahan crime boss told to pay £1m or face more jail time

A UK boss of the Kinahan organised crime group has been ordered to pay back more than £1m or face more jail time, prosecutors have said.

Irish national Thomas Kavanagh, 57, who was sentenced to 21 years in 2022, will have three months to pay or face another 12 years in prison, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

Prosecutors estimate the Kinahan group, of which Kavanagh, from Tamworth in Staffordshire, was described as the “head”, smuggled drugs from Europe with a street value of about £30m by hiding it inside machinery.

A judge estimated Kavanagh and associate Gary Vickery, 42, of Solihull, gained £12,235,047 and £10,966,619 respectively from their criminal lifestyle, the CPS said.

The judge at Ipswich Crown Court ordered Kavanagh to pay £1,123,096 based on his assets, which include his 50% share of a Tamworth mansion, money from the sale of various other properties in the UK and a villa in Spain, and about £150,000 of “high-end bags, clothes and accessories”, the National Crime Agency said.

Kavanagh, from Mile Oak, was sentenced in March 2022, after admitting drugs and money laundering offences.

Vickery, of Boundary Road, was ordered to pay £109,312 within three months or face another two years in prison, prosecutors said.

At previous court hearings, orders were made to forfeit an Audemars Piguet watch worth £75,000, as well as just over 100,000 euros that was seized from a hotel room when Vickery was arrested, the NCA said.

In 2024, Kavanagh was sentenced to an additional six years in jail – to run concurrent with his existing sentence – after he and associates plotted to lead NCA officers to a buried stash of 11 weapons in a bid to secure himself a lighter prison sentence for his multimillion-pound drug enterprise.

Running the conspiracy from prison, Kavanagh enlisted the help of his brother-in-law, Liam Byrne, 44, and associate Shaun Kent, 38, in the plan to deceive the NCA.

Byrne was jailed for five years while Kent was handed a six-year prison sentence for their roles in the plot.