Real IRA man Nathan Kinsella up on money-laundering charges after €1m Blackrock house move

The Sunday World can reveal that Kinsella and his partner, Jennifer Dunne, are both accused of using funds lodged to a bank account, on dates in 2018 and 2019, knowing them to be the proceeds of crime.

The couple have yet to formally enter a plea to six money-laundering charges brought under Section 7 of Criminal Justice Act (Money Laundering and Terrorism Finance).

Kinsella, who was a close pal of slain RIRA leader Alan Ryan, is believed to have met Dunne while she was working for shamed hotel tycoon Jim Mansfield jnr.

At the time, Kinsella was a frequent visitor to Tasaggart House, the Mansfield family home, and was regularly seen in the socialite’s company.

Last year, the Sunday World published photographs of Mansfield Jnr chatting with Kinsella as he hosted a family event to celebrate his son Samuel’s debut on Mondello Park racetrack.

Sources say that the younger Mansfield was furious that Kinsella showed up at his event, believing he was taking advantage of his father’s ‘soft’ nature.

During Mansfield Jnr’s trial last year, a court was told how Kinsella had been using his Co. Dublin mansion ‘like his office’.

Dad-of-six Kinsella ultimately moved into a house in the leafy Dublin suburb of Blackrock with Dunne – a house purchased for almost €1 million and refurbished to a high standard in 2018.

The pair continue to live in the six-bedroom, four-bathroom home at Richmond, off Newtownpark Avenue.

The registered owner of the home is builder Gerry McGreevy, who is also a known associate of Jim Mansfield Jnr.

McGreevy was also referenced during Mansfield’s trial when the court was told he was the investor who bought some of the Mansfield’s assets from a receiver – including Paddy Reilly’s Field and the Finnstown House Hotel.

Mansfield Jnr was said in court to have enlisted dissident groups to help him get back ownership of Paddy Reilly’s Field.

Locals in Blackrock – one of South Dublin’s most expensive suburbs – were not impressed that Kinsella had moved into the area.

In April 2020, heavily-armed officers surrounded the property and moved in to search it, removing documents and electronic devices.

However, Kinsella has told friends that he is very concerned about an ongoing health problem he has and is desperate to raise funds so he can attempt to buy the property, which he has already told close associates he owns.

Kinsella visited Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where he took part in a medical treatment and has been hospitalised several times over the past year.

Kinsella first hit the headlines when he was associated with a Real IRA gang under murdered leader Alan Ryan.

Ryan had been the head of the Real IRA’s Dublin Brigade and ran a massive extortion racket on drug dealers operating in the capital.

He is suspected of ordering the murder of Michael ‘Micka’ Kelly in 2011 in a bid to put pressure on other traffickers to pay ‘protection money’ to the dissident group.

However, a coalition of drug dealers are believed to have eventually decided to hit back and took out Ryan in September 2012.

After his death, paramilitaries displayed their might at his funeral when they turned out in their droves, uniformed in black and white and let off a number of rounds of ammunition as their ‘martyr’ was lowered into his grave.

Despite the show of strength, the organisation was falling apart at the seams and in the years that followed all of Ryan’s inner circle would be targeted.

Kinsella himself survived a kneecapping attack before he was arrested by officers who rounded up the funeral-goers after a massive public outcry.

In 2021, Kinsella’s name was again in the headlines when he was mentioned at Mansfield Jnr’s trial in the Special Criminal Court.

Mansfield was ultimately jailed for trying to pervert the course of justice but was acquitted of a separate charge of conspiracy to falsely imprison his former security chief, Martin Byrne.

During the trial, State witness Martin Byrne, a former head of security at Citywest, was described as an ‘unreliable and dishonest’ by Mansfield Jnr’s legal team – but the judges at the Special Criminal Court disagreed.

Martin Byrne had told the court how a string of paramilitary groups and terrorists were hired to provide security.

He said that Jimmy Jnr was at one point paying €2,500 a week to the Real IRA to protect him from the Wall Traveller gang and a family described as the ‘Kavanaghs’, who said they were owed money.

Since being locked up, Mansfield Jnr has also been named as a defendant in CAB proceedings targeting him, US-sanctioned cartel boss Daniel Kinahan and convicted drug trafficker Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh.

The High Court heard that Mansfield Jnr was given €4.5 million in cash in two suitcases by Daniel Kinahan and his associate Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh in 2009.

It was intended Mansfield invest the money in property assets for the cartel.

However, the deal collapsed due to the crashing economy and the Kinahan cartel did not get its properties.

The High Court heard how Mansfield’s financial position “deteriorated” after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger economy and how his relationships with the cartel “soured” after he went into receivership.

Mansfield Jnr later reached a deal with the cartel to effectively repay them by giving them a luxury house in a gated community in Saggart as well as a sum of money.

CAB has been investigating the house, at Coldwater Lakes, and its history for a number of years.

The High Court was told Kinahan effectively owned the property from 2014 and had stayed there for periods.