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Man who admits facilitating Kinahan cartel in carrying out shooting is successful businessman

Man facilitated cartel by buying credit for phone

Alan Sherry

Today at 15:13

A man who this week admitted facilitating the Kinahan cartel in carrying out a serious offence is a company director who runs a successful fitness business in Tipperary.

Michael Crotty, of Slí Aonghusa, Aras na Rí, Cashel, Co Tipperary, is facing sentencing after this week admitting to buying a phone credit for senior cartel figure Sean McGovern, which assisted the gang in the murder of Noel ‘Duck Egg’ Kirwan in 2016.

Crotty said it was never his intention that his buying of the phone credit would lead to the endangerment of another person.

There is currently a warrant out for McGovern’s arrest in relation to the murder of Mr Kirwan and gardai are hoping to extradite him back to Ireland from Dubai.

Crotty had initially pleaded not guilty to facilitating the murder but on Tuesday he admitted to a new charge based on recklessness, with his counsel telling the court it had never been Crotty’s intention for the top-up — bought at a Spar shop in Naas, Co Kildare, on December 21, 2016, on behalf of Mr McGovern — to be used in the endangerment of any person.

Our picture shows Crotty promoting his gym and personal fitness business which he runs in Tipperary.

“I am the owner of Xtreme CSC Cashel so I am the manager and look after the day-to-day running of the gym,” he said in promotional material for his business.

The most recent accounts from Crotty’s company Xtreme CSC Tipperary Ltd, which he set up in 2018, show that in 2022 it had €79,092 in tangible assets and €33,997 in cash at the bank and in hand.

There is no suggestion anyone else linked to the business has any involvement in crime and Crotty is not involved in any of the other Xtreme CSC gyms.

Crotty has known Sean McGovern, one of the men injured during the Regency Hotel attack in 2016, for years.

McGovern, from Crumlin, was named in the Special Criminal Court at Crotty’s case as a significant figure in a leadership role in the Kinahan organised crime group, and gardai said he is currently in Dubai.

Presiding judge Ms Justice Caroline Biggs extended Crotty’s bail and adjourned the brief hearing to April 22 for sentencing.