Liam Byrne (Irish criminal)

Byrne and his close friend Liam Greenhalgh, the Ireland under-16 captain, carried out armed robberies on two shops in Dublin's south inner city in July 1998.[6] During the second robbery, an off-duty Garda walked into the shop.[6]

Liam pleaded guilty to burglary, dangerous driving and firearms charges.[6] In January 2000 he was found guilty and given a suspended sentence of four years.[6]

On 23 April 2000 Trevor Donnelly and his partner Jennifer Doyle were involved in a row with three women in the Abrakebabra in the Crumlin Shopping Centre.[6] The women followed them from the takeaway, hitting them as a security guard intervened.[6] Byrne arrived in his car and began beating Donnelly with a baseball bat, hitting him even as he lay on the ground.[6] When Jennifer pleaded with him to stop, Liam said "Tell him if he wakes up it's bullets."[6]

About fifty people witnessed the assault, but only Doyle and Donnelly were willing to testify.[6] Most were too afraid of Byrne and his gang to testify.[6]

When he was brought before the court his suspended sentence was activated and he was jailed for the first time on 23 May 2000.[6]

Byrne tried to intimidate Doyle on several occasions.[6] First he offered €50,000 to her to not testify, with a threat to kill her if she testified.[6] She refused to take the bribe.[6]

Further threats forced her to leave her home after it was shot at.[6] There was a plot to murder her - an INLA gunman was asked to kill her to prevent her testimony.[6]

She lived in B&Bs and hotel accommodation under an alias and was virtually penniless.[6] She was not included in a witness protection programme.[7]

After she testified she was badly injured in an assault in the corridors of the Four Courts.[6][7]

Her testimony was a major factor in Byrne's conviction and two years were added to the four year sentence which after remission amounted to four and a half years.[6] The sentences were initially to run concurrently but the Court of Appeals decided they should run consecutively.[7]

In September 2000 senior member of the gang Liam Roe bought a house on Grangeview Road, Clondalkin for €119,000.[4] Liam then bought the house off Liam Roe for €270,000 with thirty-year mortgage of €150,000.[4] It is not clear where the €120,000 came from.[4]

He claimed in 2006 that he was a spray painter who had a garage in Lucan and earned €530 a week with a €5,000 bonus.[4] This did not tally with his tax returns which showed he only earned €10,827 and paid only €245.51.[4] He was also able to make mortage payments of €697.22 per month on a house in Clondalkin while paying €850 a month rent on the house in Raleigh Square.[4]

In July 2016 there was €110,087.03 left on his mortgage and he was paying back €2,000 each month.[4] His sister Maria was withdrawing €2,000 on the same date but didn't make a claim on the Clondalkin property in the High Court.[4]

The Criminal Assets Bureau discovered that Maria got the money when she sold a house in Ashbourne to sister Melanie Johnson.[4] €400,080 of that money was lodged to Maria's account between November 2007 and March 2010 and €49,800 was then lodged from her account to Liam's.[4] The High Court declared the Grangeview Road house to be the proceeds of crime.[4]

Sean McGovern bought a house on Kildare Road in Crumlin valued at €270,000 in March 2015.[4] It was extensively renovated for over €247,000.[4] He lived there with his partner, Anita Freeman, who the CAB discovered was receiving local rent authority payments and then paying them into Liam's account.[4]

CAB also discovered that €150,000 of the money used to buy the house came from an Investec bank account in Mauritius.[4] The money was described as "a loan for the purchase of real estate in Ireland" coming from "Mule State Foundation" c/o Grand Baie Trust Company but the CAB count not find evidence of a loan agreement, a repayment structure or any repayments of the purported loan.[4]

The Bureau determined that the house was bought for €155,000 - €150,000 from the Mule State Foundation and €20,000 from the car businesses that had been lodged to McGovern's account.[4] Forensic analysis of McGovern and Freeman's means could not determine the source of the money used for the renovations.[4] McGovern's house was declared to be the proceeds of crime.[4]

The houses at Grangeview Road, Clondalkin and at Kildare Road, Crumlin were broken into and vandalised shortly before they were to be handed over.[9] The CAB applied to the High Court to ask Maria Byrne to promise that the Raleigh Square house would be handed over intact.[9] In October 2020 a 28 year old man was charged with the arson attack in Grangeview Road.[10]

The CAB asked the National Crime Agency in the United Kingdom and they replied with information about two conspiracy investigations into drug smuggling from mainland Europe into Ireland and the UK.[4]

The first investigation, into industrial metal rollers that contained cocaine, cannabis and mixing agent led to the conviction of James Mulvey and Barry Kenneth Phibbs.[4] Mulvey was one of the Kinahan gang's main dealers in the UK.[4] Police discovered that the Mule State Foundation was established "for the educational benefit and wellbeing of the Mulvey family".[4]

The second investigation, into VAT fraud and money laundering, involved charging VAT on invoices that was never paid to UK Revenue.[4] The money was paid either via cash or to people operating under false names.[4] This disguised that the money was going to the Byrne Organised Crime Gang.[4] Between June 2014 and April 2015 £353,000 was paid to the Mule State Foundation.[4]

On 26 February 2016 two of the Foundation's three council members signed a resolution: "It is noted that the Board of the Foundation have taken a decision to write off the loan of €150,000 provided to Mr Sean Gerard McGovern due to his recent demise".[4] In fact, Sean McGovern had survived the Regency Hotel attack.[4]