Kinahan crime boss ordered to pay back £1m or face more jail time
Prosecutors estimate the Kinahan organised criminal group, of which Kavanagh was the head, smuggled drugs from Europe with a street value of around £30 million by hiding the products inside machinery.
Kavanagh was sentenced in March 2022 to 21 years in prison after pleading guilty to drugs and money laundering offences.
A judge sitting at Ipswich Crown Court on Friday estimated that Kavanagh and his associate Gary Vickery, 42, of Boundary Road in Solihull, West Midlands, gained £12,235,047 and £10,966,619 respectively from their criminal lifestyle, the CPS said.
The judge ordered Kavanagh to pay £1,123,096 based on his current assets, which include 'his 50% share of his fortified family mansion in Tamworth, money from the sale of various other properties in the UK and a villa in Spain, and approximately £150,000 of high-end bags, clothes and accessories which were discovered when Kavanagh's house was searched following his initial arrest in 2019', a spokesperson for the NCA added.
Vickery was ordered to pay a sum of £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 added.
Kay Mellor, head of Operations HQ at the NCA, said: 'Thomas Kavanagh was the head of the UK's arm of the Kinahan organised crime group, responsible for the importation and distribution of drugs and firearms, making millions of pounds in the process.
'He and his gang believed they were untouchable, but that proved to be their downfall.
'Kavanagh and Vickery will be behind bars for many years to come and now have to pay back more than £1 million to the state.'
Adrian Foster, chief Crown prosecutor, said: 'Thomas Kavanagh and Gary Vickery are dangerous criminals in the organised gang world, importing millions of pounds worth of dangerous drugs on an industrial scale to the UK.
'This successful £1 million Confiscation Order demonstrates the prosecution team's commitment to work across borders to strip organised criminals of their illegal gains.
'We continue to pursue the proceeds of crime robustly and will return them back to court to serve an additional sentence of imprisonment if they fail to pay their orders.'
In October 2024, Kavanagh was sentenced to another six years in jail 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, 44-year-old Liam Byrne, and associate Shaun Kent, 38, in the plan to deceive the NCA.
Byrne – who fled to Majorca after the events – was jailed for five years while Kent was handed a six-year prison sentence for their roles in the plot.
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Scottish Sun
9 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Laughing gas ‘epidemic' sweeping party island with tourists left foaming at mouth, having seizures & permanently scarred
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But dealers in San Antonio are armed with huge canisters that pump out up to 80 hits - and come in boxes of six. At the going rate of five euros a balloon, the street value of a six-pack of canisters is around £2,000 - and they're strewn across the town. When The Sun visited the notorious strip, our reporter was hounded and followed down the street by dealers. Katie Mae, a bartender at Irish pub Shenanigans on the town's main strip, said laughing gas is 'the worst of them all'. The 21-year-old told The Sun: "I'll lecture anyone I see taking it - I've seen the worst things from laughing gas. 'I've seen young lads having seizures on the street and foaming at the mouths, but their friends are high so do nothing to help. 'One girl I saw inhaled gas straight from the canister, and it froze one side of her face. "It was all cut up and she would have been scarred for life." After working on the strip for three seasons, Katie said: 'The consequences aren't talked about anywhere near enough. "People don't take it seriously as a drug - but it's one of the worst." One British bar worker living in San Antonio told us she used to sell laughing gas here, but stopped after one of her customers 'nearly died'. The Brit said she got 'freaked out' when a young lad fell backwards and smashed his head on the road in the midst of a balloon high. She told us: 'I used to sell laughing gas for about a year-and-a-half because it was easy money. 'You'd sell each balloon for five euros and buy the canisters for cheap. There's loads of shops around here that sell them. 'But as soon as that happened I stopped. It really freaked me out. 'And the gas is not good stuff - it freezes your insides.' Nitrous oxide - the facts NITROUS oxide - also known as laughing gas or hippy crack - was recently made a Class C due to the dangers associated with the drug. It can cause a range of health issues and in some cases can even be fatal. 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In some cases, frequent and prolonged use of nitrous oxide has been linked to thromboembolic events - this means a blood clot has gotten stuck and caused an obstruction. The so-called laughing gas has also resulted in deaths. Another Brit staff member at the bar described the situation as an "epidemic". The streets around San Antonio's so-called West End, which includes the main strip and most of the bars, are littered with brightly-coloured rubber confetti. Angelica Giraldo, a shopworker at Xanadu Supermarket near the strip, said the mess left behind by party-goers has ruined certain areas. She said: 'Lots of the tourists who come to San Antonio seem just to want to take drugs and to party rather than enjoy the island. 'I don't really see the other stuff - but the rubbish from the balloons is very clear. You see them all over the road, it's very ugly.' Angelica, 40, has lived in Ibiza all her life and noticed a sharp rise in laughing gas in recent years. 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On one occasion, The Sun saw Civil Guards officers walking down the strip with a confiscated canister, and another cop was seen searching a young man for drugs. The Sun approached cops on the street - but they all refused to talk about the issue. While laughing gas is the most obvious drug in San Antonio due to the brightly-coloured balloons, almost any party drug you can think of is readily available. 9 Tourists inhale laughing gas on benches in San Antonio Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd 9 Finished balloons litter the street on the notorious party strip Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd 9 Angelica Giraldo, a shopworker at Xanadu Supermarket near the strip, said the mess left behind by party-goers has ruined certain areas Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd Walking along the sea-front, dealers call out "hey, dude, yo, what do you need?' to almost every passerby. Anything other than a stern refusal sees them opening up a pouch stuffed full of drugs, and flashing you bags of coloured powders or pills. Ricardo, who runs Jungle Bistró Ibiza in the old town district with his wife, said he is glad that most of the anti-social behaviour is limited to San Antonio's West End. And he said it is 'easy' for the dealers to sell to young Brits. The restaurant manager said: 'A lot of them are British, they come to San Antonio just for the parties. 'It is easy to sell to them. I don't want any of that over in this part of town. We mainly have families around here' San Antonio Town Council said: "The process is also underway to incorporate ten new officers into the Local Police force, increasing its staff from 59 to 69. "This will ensure a more effective service tailored to the municipality's current needs. 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Daily Mail
19 hours ago
- Daily Mail
As a perverted osteopath is jailed for spying on 2,000 women, one of his famous clients asks the question now tormenting dozens of celebrities... 'Was he filming me in my underwear? The awful thing is, I'll never know'
The last time Torben Hersborg appeared in court, the British justice system didn't even have a name for his twisted crimes. After the Danish-born osteopath was caught filming up the skirts of two young women on an escalator at Leicester Square underground station in July 1995, an initial charge of outraging public decency was dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service. Hersborg, then 34, was charged instead with 'behaving in an indecent manner' under what were then London Transport by-laws. He was fined £500 and banned from the tube network, in effect receiving little more than a rap on the knuckles from the bench at Marlborough Street Magistrates Court. And so the 'skirt pest' was quickly forgotten. No matter that police, who searched Hersborg's upmarket Bloomsbury mews home, also unearthed a library of fetish films showing only the tops of women's legs and their buttocks. No matter, too, that he became aggressive when arrested and, as the prosecuting barrister put it, 'did not see anything wrong' with his behaviour. He claimed he'd got the idea from watching pornography on satellite TV; he'd filmed with a hidden camcorder between the legs of 'two young girls' for 'illicit thrills'. But perhaps most astonishing of all is that Hersborg was able to carry on working, slipping through the net of the professional regulator, the General Osteopathic Council (GOsC). Over the three decades which followed, Hersborg went on to become one of the country's most successful – and wealthy – osteopaths. But while treating a host of celebrity clients including TV presenter Fearne Cotton and actress Anna Friel, he was living a depraved double life as one of Britain's most prolific voyeurs. This week, almost 30 years to the day of his last court appearance, the 64-year-old married father of two was jailed for three years and five months after admitting taking images and videos of around 2,000 women without their knowledge and for his own sexual gratification. But questions remain, not least how, despite his earlier conviction, he was able to carry on working as a health professional, a career which gave him access to female patients – often dressed in little more than underwear. Some of those women are now among Hersborg's thousands of victims. So too are the female London University students he regularly spied on through the floor-to-ceiling windows of their halls of residence, filming them in states of undress using a camcorder and telescope set up on the back seat of his car. The CPS said this week that because the images he made do not show the women's faces, police have so far been unable to identify those he preyed on, leaving those who came into contact with him in a state of agonising doubt. Among those who visited Hersborg at his practice – The Central London Osteopathy and Sports Injury Clinic in Hoxton, East London – was author and broadcaster Lesley-Ann Jones who became his patient in 2021 after injuring her back in a fall down stairs. She told the Mail this week how she had trusted softly-spoken Hersborg, to the extent that she thought nothing of it when, at the start of each 20-minute £75 session, he asked her to undress down to her bra and knickers and remained in the room while she did so. 'He would regularly ask me to touch my toes and stand directly behind me while I was doing it,' she said. 'Was he filming me? The truth is I'll probably never know. I felt comfortable and safe with him. Torben was very friendly and assertive. I came to think of him as a friend. And he was a genius when it came to fixing my back.' At times, when Hersborg manipulated her neck and spine, he leant and sometimes 'virtually lay on top of me'. Lesley-Ann assumed it was a normal part of osteopathy. Now she is unsure. 'Knowing how wrong I was about him has made me doubt myself,' she said. 'I can't get rid of the images in my head. I'm terrified thinking about what footage he might have made of me. I feel absolutely betrayed and abused by him. I'm so freaked out.' Internationally renowned Hersborg was held in high esteem by hundreds of clients including dozens of celebrities. Pop star Grace Jones flew him around the world when she was recording and touring. Golden Globe and Emmy award-winning actress Anna Friel left a glowing review on his website, describing him as 'the only man who touches my back' and writing: 'When I was told my back would take two weeks to fix, Torben had me on my feet in two days.' Others on his client list included Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood and Strictly Come Dancing contestant Viscountess Weymouth. Another left stunned by revelations about Hersborg is former world tennis No.1 and fellow Dane Caroline Wozniacki. She told Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet last month that she was 'shocked' to learn the truth about Hersborg and that while, to her knowledge, she had never experienced anything negative at his hands, 'it is clear that it is terrible'. Hersborg, report those that crossed paths with him, often appeared dazzled by celebrity. A childhood friend of Danish actor and former Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen, his Instagram page was jam-packed with snaps of himself with his star patients. He was also a prolific name-dropper. Another of his former patients said this week that she recalled Hersborg showing off photos on his phone for five minutes while she sat there in her bra and knickers 'feeling a bit exposed'. 'I'm wondering if it was a ploy to film/photograph my body for an extended period,' she said. 'I'm left feeling violated.' Lesley-Ann says that Hersborg 'enjoyed aligning himself with celebrities. It gave him an aura of legitimacy.' As well as flying around the world to visit clients, Hersborg, who moved to the UK in 1984, clearly enjoyed the financial fruits of his work. He trained at the European School of Osteopathy in Maidstone, Kent, and qualified in 1991. At the time of his first conviction, he was practising from clinics in both London and Crawley, West Sussex, and earning enough to live in a property in central London now worth £1.6million. His 1995 'indecency' conviction did nothing to halt his ascent, despite the fact that – as his lawyer told JPs – he had volunteered his suspension from what was then the General Council of Practising Osteopaths, possibly as a way to avoid a disciplinary hearing. That body was replaced in 1997 by a more powerful statutory regulator, the General Osteopathic Council. Osteopaths were given until 2000 to comply with a legal requirement to register. Records show that Hersborg did so in May that year. Astonishingly, a spokesperson for the GOsC said his past conviction 'would have been known, at the time, to those processing his application to join the Register'. The spokesperson added: 'At that time the decision was taken that he was fit to join the Register and therefore fit to practise.' Within two years of his 'upskirting' crime, Hersborg was hailed a miracle worker by GB sprinter Iwan Thomas, who had been on the verge of pulling out of the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur because of a bad back but went on to win gold in the 400metres thanks to his treatment. 'He was working on me from 11pm until four in the morning, trying to locate the problem,' Thomas told journalists after the race. 'Then something suddenly clicked and it was alright again. The pain simply disappeared. Talk about a miracle cure.' Later that year, Hersborg got married and went on to have two children who are now in their 20s. A neighbour of the family's £1.2million modern dockside property in East London, said that 'polite and courteous' Hersborg 'had the aura of someone who was doing well in life'. 'It's so shocking. He seemed a perfectly ordinary man.' He was well-dressed, said the neighbour, and drove around in a flashy car. It was that vehicle, a dark green Lexus, which attracted the attention of a member of the public on December 21 last year. Hersborg was lying on the back seat, which he'd covered in black bin liners, wearing a balaclava and black gloves and using a telescope and a camcorder to film young women undressing through the windows of a university hall of residence near King's Cross. The man, who called police that night, said he had seen the same person lurking around the student flats over the course of four years. He had previously reported him but the police, it was later said in court, were either too slow to arrive or never came at all. After he was arrested, Hersborg claim he'd pulled over to 'relax' after a judo session but after arresting him police found disturbing videos on his camera, taken over three consecutive nights. When his home was raided, police found a collection of cameras and storage devices containing the films he made of his thousands of victims. He used sophisticated equipment to zoom in on women on beaches, at bus stops and while crossing the road. Hersborg told police he began filming women in their homes when the thrill of 'upskirting' began to wear off. He did so on more than 500 occasions, spying through gaps in the curtains and capturing his victims getting in and out of the shower and engaging in sexual acts. In what the judge described as a 'gross breach of trust', he concealed cameras in his consulting room and manipulated women's bodies while treating them in order to film their private areas. And while Hersborg, who admitted multiple counts of voyeurism, was jailed at Snaresbrook Crown Court this week – and made the subject of a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order banning him from carrying camera equipment in public and placed on the sex offenders' register – in all likelihood, he will be free by next year. 'His sentence is pathetic when you think about how many women were involved and how long it went on for,' says Lesley-Ann Jones. 'It's no punishment at all.' What the future holds for Hersborg remains to be seen. He has been suspended by the GOsC, which says it only became aware of his latest crimes at the end of 2024. Its Chief Executive Matthew Redford told the Mail this week: 'My firm expectation is that Torben Hersborg will be removed from the Register by our independent Professional Conduct Committee.' Despite his sentence, Hersborg's practice is still open for business. The sign above the entrance that used to boast his name and the words 'trusted by Olympic athletes' has been replaced. He resigned as a director in January this year but his 61-year-old wife Minerva, the practice manager, remains a director. So too does his 26-year-old son. In a statement read out in court Hersborg, who appeared from prison by video-link, revealed his wife is divorcing him and that he has 'broken the hearts' of his children. As his sentence was read out, he collapsed, a moment of high drama which seemed to epitomise his fall from grace. Judge Timothy Greene halted proceedings while a doctor tended to a minor cut on Hersborg's head. When they resumed, the osteopath said the stress of the court case had caused him to collapse. 'I feel like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, it's really not a nice feeling. I'm so embarrassed about myself. I'm not able to speak to anyone,' he said via a statement to the court. 'I know I'll never do this again.' Amid all this self-pity, he made no mention of the impact of his hideous crimes on victims, or spared a thought for the thousands of women who will now never know for sure if they were among them.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
Drugs kingpin who ran UK arm of Kinahan Cartel must pay back £1m of his criminal fortune after making £12m from international drugs racket
A drugs kingpin who ran the UK arm of the 'Kinahan Cartel' has been given three months to pay more than £1million of his criminal earnings. Thomas 'Bomber' Kavanagh, 57, was jailed for 21 years at Ipswich Crown Court in March 2022 after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to import class A and B drugs and money laundering offences in July 2020. The same court today concluded that the Irish national made an eye-watering £12,235,047 from the major drug importation conspiracy. It included a half share in his £1million pile in Tamworth, which was fitted with bullet proof windows, equity in a property in Majorca, cash in banks and made from rents, designer watches and clothing, a family holiday to Cancun and about £40,000 seized by police during the investigation. The Kinahan drugs operation is said to be run by Irish man Christy 'Dapper Don' Kinahan, 68, and his two sons Daniel, 48, and Christopher Jr, 44, who are based in Dubai. In April 2022 the US Department of State placed $5million rewards for information that leads to their arrest and prosecution, branding them the heads of a major international drugs cartel. Kavanagh's henchmen Gary 'Flash' Vickery, 42, and Daniel Canning were jailed for 20 years (reduced to 18 years on appeal) and 19 years and six months, respectively. Canning's sentence included five years for possession of a firearm to be served concurrently. Judge Martyn Levett, who sentenced the three and heard the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) case, accepted that financial investigations by the police and CPS had found that the recoverable amount identified from Kavanagh's existing assets is £1,123,096, which he was ordered to pay within three months or face further time in prison. Today he made POCA orders against Kavanagh and Vickery giving them each the same time to pay the money or face extra prison time. Separately, Vickery was found to have benefited to a total amount of £10,966,619, but only £109,312 was found to be available. He was also given three months to pay or face an extended sentence. The court heard Vickery's assets were assessed from money in bank accounts, a half share in a property in Lanzarote, where he was extradited from, vehicles, money spent on a wedding, holiday deposits, watches and a boat. Kavanagh's home was jointly purchased with his wife, Joanne, sister of Kinahan associate Liam Byrne. The couple purchased the luxury pad for £565,000 after Kavanagh's Dublin home was earlier seized by the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) in Ireland. There is no suggestion Mrs Kavanagh had any involvement in or knowledge of her husband's criminal activities. Other assets that were seized during a January 2019 raid on the address include designer goods estimated at £500,000, including around 100 pairs of designer shoes, 120 handbags, 36 pairs of Armani jeans, Hugo Boss suits, Canada Goose and Moncler jackets as well as flashy watches and jewellery. The £40,000 cash was also found stuffed in a sofa and in Moschino, Gucci and Chanel handbags. Before being extradited to the UK from Lanzarote in November 2021, Vickery had a limited-edition Sunseeker Superhawk power boat, which had featured in the James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. Vickery and his wife Nicola O'Connor, who had no involvement in or knowledge of her husband's criminal activities, were living in a stunning gated villa in Macher on the island. On January 12, 2019, Kavanagh was arrested at Birmingham Airport as he returned from a holiday in Mexico. He was jailed at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court in September 2019 for three years for possessing a 10,000-volt stun gun disguised as a torch, which was found with other weapons during the raid on the house. In August 2023, Kavanagh, and Liam Byrne, 44, and Shaun Kent, 39, from Liverpool, were charged with firearms offences in connection with an informant plot which was hatched while the former was in jail over the stun gun conviction. Kavanagh later admitted at the Old Bailey that he had plotted to fool the NCA by saying in May 2021 that he had intelligence about where a stash of weapons from Holland was hidden buried in a field in Newry, Northern Ireland, in the hope of getting a lighter sentence in the drugs conspiracy case. The firearms: seven machine guns, three automatic handguns, and an assault rifle and ammunition, were recovered by police. The men had discussed the plot on the encrypted mobile phone system EncroChat, which was infiltrated by French police in April 2020, meaning the NCA had access to the messages. In October 2024 Kavanagh was sentenced to six years in prison to be served consecutively to his 21-year sentence. Byrne was sentenced to five years while Kent received six years. Investigations found Canning only has 16 euros and 19 cents left in an Ulster Bank account in Ireland. The CPS argued that he should be liable for the full amount of the drugs assessed at about £10.4million, but his defence barrister Richard Craven Furlong argued he had a lesser role than Kavanagh and Vickery and had no shareholding in any of the drugs. Canning's defence said he should only be held liable for various transactions into his various bank accounts that totalled around £145,000, about £80,000 of which he used to pay the rent on a unit where some of the drugs were taken. Mr Furlong said he was not disputing that he played a leading role in the conspiracy, but that he had no ownership of the drugs or any shareholding in the 'Kavanagh Cooperative'. Judge Levett said there was a 'huge discrepancy' between the amounts. The CPS argued due to the scale of the conspiracy involving 'multiple importations' he should be found liable for the full amount. Canning's POCA case was adjourned for further argument about Canning's assets. The case continues.
