Gardaí and Spanish police seek motive for Kavanagh killing

Gardaí are liaising with the Spanish police in an effort to establish if Dubliner Gerard Kavanagh was shot dead because of a localised feud on the Costa del Sol or by an Irish gang that hired gunmen to kill him in a row over a drugs debt in the Republic.

Kavanagh (44), a married man from Crumlin, had been heavily involved in the drugs trade for over two decades. A former boxer, he was regarded as a volatile and dangerous criminal who had become a senior drug-dealing figure among the Irish underworld settled in southern Spain. He also collected debts for Dubliner Christy Kinahan, a convicted drug dealer at the centre of a major gangland investigation by the Garda and the Spanish police.

Kavanagh was jailed for four years in 1996 after being caught with a quantity of heroin. He was described at that time as being on a “hit list” of major dealers drawn up by a vigilante group with links to the Provisional IRA. Some on the list had been shot dead or wounded.

Despite being in his mid-20s, he was described by Garda witnesses during his trial as “the major figure in drugs supplies in the Crumlin, Drimnagh and Dolphin’s Barn areas of Dublin for some time” and “a prime mover” in the underworld. In more recent years, he had been embroiled in rows with a number of criminal elements.

He had been the victim of extortion demands by the Real IRA in Dublin several years ago when the organisation in the city was headed by Dubliner Alan Ryan. While Ryan was shot dead in north Dublin two years ago, Kavanagh was subjected to renewed extortion demands by the new IRA alliance that has since emerged. He remained in conflict with the paramilitaries up to the time of his death and had been warned by gardaí his life was in danger. He had also made enemies within the underworld in Ireland due to his debt-collecting activities. Garda sources believe he had also crossed Irish and British criminals in Spain when debt-collecting.

He was involved in a tense feud with a major criminal figure in his 40s from Dublin who had clashed with Kavanagh and the Kinahan gang over a seven-figure drugs debt.

Kavanagh was gunned down by two men, wearing balaclavas and dressed in black, in an ambush near Marbella on Saturday afternoon. The killers burst into a well-known Irish bar, Harmon's in Elviria, at about 5pm and shot him nine times, hitting him in the head, arms and upper body. He fled as the shots were fired and was wounded a number of times as he tried to escape before being shot again and slumping to the ground. One of the gunmen then shot him in the head as he lay dying on the ground, before he and his accomplice fled in a waiting BMW later found burnt out.

Kavanagh, who lived in Spain with his wife and adult children, was taken to hospital but was pronounced dead shortly after arrival. A mobile phone found on his body was seized by the Spanish police and will be analysed to try and establish if he had gone to the bar to meet somebody he knew only to be ambushed.

Last month, the former European boxing champion Jamie Moore was shot in the legs after leaving a house in Marbella, where he was based as a trainer for Irish fighter Matthew Macklin. Gardaí and the Spanish police believe he was an innocent party shot in a case of mistaken identity, and that Kavanagh was the intended target.