EXCLUSIVE | 

Jailed wife of Kinahan bag man ‘Mr Nobody’ says ‘I’m not a criminal, you don’t say no to them’

“I’m a housewife. But you have to live the life to understand it and you will never understand it.”

Wed 19 Jul 2023 at 18:00

The wife of Kinahan bag man Declan Brady this week broke her silence after serving her sentence for helping launder €770,000 in cartel cash, insisting: “I am not a criminal, I was made to do it.”

In the first and only interview she has given, 57-year-old Deirdre Brady – who has been characterised in the media as ‘a gangster’s moll’ – said she had no choice but “to do what I was told”.

“It’s not as simple as I just went down the bank – it’s not as simple as that,” she said.

“People were killing each other, do you think I was going to stand up to them? Do you think you’d say no? You just don’t say no to them. And the courts know that as well.”

Brady served three months of a one-year sentence handed down last December for her part in the laundering of cartel cash through mortgage payments on a Spanish holiday property, a wedding at Druid’s Glen and transfers to other gang members – including €141,000 to the head of the cartel’s UK operations Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh.

Until this week, when the Sunday World called to her at an address in the east of the country, Brady said she had never been asked to give her side of the story or say whether she had willingly participated in the elaborate series of financial transactions.

“You already know everything that was said in court,” she began. “But the whole length, when the court case was going on, no-one asked me: Was I made to do it?

“And then you go to court on the last day and you are told: ‘She did it of her own free will!’

“If someone had asked me was I made to do it. I would have said yes. But no-one ever asked me that question. But, of course, I was.

“And I was just annoyed with the courts that I was never asked that.”

Asked how she was ‘made to do it’, Brady responded: “It’s just, I was told to do it.

“I’m a housewife. But you have to live the life to understand it and you will never understand it.

“You’d really have to.

“I’m an ordinary person and I’m married to Declan since I was 20 years of age.

“We’re over 30 years married, we got married in 1987.

“Declan was self-employed. Declan drove trucks. He worked in Robert Roberts and that came up in the papers before, so I’m not telling you anything different.

“We were comfortable.”

Asked if she knew Declan was involved with the Kinahan cartel, she said: ‘No, but then my house got raided for firearms and I got the shock of my life when that happened.”

Deirdre was given a fully suspended sentence but was later ordered to serve one year in jail after this was appealed by the DPP on grounds of undue leniency.

“Going into the Dochas Centre wasn’t that bad,” said Deirdre, “which is very hard to believe.”

“Everyone was very nice to me. Honest to God, the courts and the media were more stressful to me.

“I was in the Dochas Centre and the first Sunday I was in I was on the front page of the paper.

“I’m a granny of seven children. I’m not a criminal …

“I’m ashamed that it happened but I still want to have a little bit of a private life.”

Speaking of her life now, Deirdre said: “My neighbours won’t even talk to me anymore.…I never wanted to be famous, but imagine being famous for all the wrong reasons?”

The search on the Bradys’ home in Celbridge occurred in January of 2017 – shortly after gardaí raided a warehouse in the Greenogue Business Park in Rathcoole, from where Deirdre’s husband Declan appeared to be operating a legitimate transport business.

In every way, the warehouse appeared normal – but the whole operation was an elaborate front to conceal a terrifying arsenal of weapons that he was maintaining for the Kinahan crime gang.

Seventeen guns. including pistols, revolvers, a sub-machine gun and an AK47-style assault rifle were recovered.

Brady never got involved with the nitty-gritty of transporting weapons

And it was this discretion and intelligence that earned him the nickname ‘Mr Nobody’ – an invisible man who was so vital to the Kinahan operation but on the outside appeared to be a successful, legitimate businessman.

“When they (the gardaí) raided the house, I asked them: ‘For what?’” Deirdre Brady recalled this week. “When they said firearms, I nearly died. I mean, I was very well brought up.

“I met Declan when I was 20 and Declan did work full time. But he’d also gone to school with all that crowd, so they always knew him. And with him working in the transport business …”

It was after Brady’s arrest over the guns cache, for which he is now serving an 11-and-a-half year sentence, that the Criminal Assets Bureau began to look in earnest into his finances.

This probe led to charges of money laundering being lodged against him, Deirdre and Declan’s mistress Erika Lukacs.

The offences involved four bank accounts – a joint PTSB account which Deirdre held with her husband, and which contained €94,000; an Ulster bank account, which held €347,000; an AIB account, with €205,000 lodged in it; and a Bank of Ireland account containing €85,000.

Money from the accounts was used to make mortgage payments on a Spanish holiday property, to pay for a €34,000 wedding at Druid’s Glen and transfers to other gang members, including €141,000 to the head of the cartel’s UK operations Thomas Kavanagh.

During Deirdre’s trial, Fiona Murphy SC, for the DPP, said there was nothing to suggest she had been under the “coercive control” of her husband.

Asked again by the Sunday World to explain what she meant by being “made” to launder the cash, Deirdre said: “People were killing each other, do you think I was going to stand up to them? Do you think you’d say no? You just don’t say no to them.”

At the end of the trials, Declan Brady had another seven years and three months for laundering cash for a criminal organisation added to his sentence.