CRIMINAL JOHN Traynor is in custody in the Netherlands having been arrested last week as part of a joint operation by the Dutch and British police against organised crime in Europe.
After arresting the 62-year-old former member of the John Gilligan drugs gang, the Dutch police realised Traynor was unlawfully at large from an English prison.
He is now in custody in the Netherlands awaiting extradition to Britain to serve the remainder of the prison sentence he absconded from in the 1990s.
He is expected to appear in a Dutch court in coming days.
Traynor was arrested last Monday week during the joint Dutch-British operation against ongoing organised crime involving international criminals based in and around Amsterdam and criminals from Britain.
The British side of the inquiry was led by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, which described Traynor as a convicted fraudster.
He was arrested in the Amstelveen area, outside Amsterdam, by the Dutch regional police.
In a statement issued after his arrest, the agency said: “[He] has been on the run since November 1992 when he failed to return to HMP Prison Highpoint, Suffolk, after a short period of home leave.
“Traynor is believed to have been living in the Netherlands for a number of years. He is now awaiting extradition to the UK to serve the remainder of his sentence.”
A UK security source told The Irish Timesthat while Traynor was now being held in relation to the outstanding prison sentence, his arrest had come during an ongoing investigation into organised crime involving Dutch and British criminals.
In 1992 Traynor failed to return to prison after being granted a period of temporary release to visit his wife and four children in Templeogue, south Dublin.
He had been jailed the previous year for his role in a scam involving stolen bearer bonds in London.
He had changed the numbers on the bonds and used them as security when he applied for a loan from a Swiss bank that he said was intended to buy a holiday complex in the Caribbean.
He managed to draw down £200,000 (€240,000) from the loan before the Met Police and fraud squad in London became aware of the scam.
When Traynor sent a runner to collect a cheque for £1 million in loan money from a bank in Geneva, the courier was arrested there and Traynor detained in London.
Traynor was convicted and jailed for seven years in October 1991. He served the first portion of his sentence in Wandsworth Prison. However, he was regarded as a low-risk inmate and was transferred to Highpoint Prison, from which he was immediately granted leave to go to Dublin to see his family. He never returned to the English jail.
Traynor lived openly in Dublin and it does not appear any effort was made by the UK authorities to have him returned there to serve the remainder of his sentence.
He was an associate of the notorious Dublin criminals Martin Cahill and John Gilligan. He is said to have arranged for Cahill to lend Gilligan £600,000 to start up his drugs business when he, Gilligan, was released from prison in the early 1990s.
After the murder of Sunday Independentcrime journalist Veronica Guerin in 1996, Gilligan fled to the Netherlands.
LIFE IN CRIME: CRIMINAL GOT INJUNCTION AGAINST VERONICA GUERIN
JOHN TRAYNOR came to the public's attention in 1996 when he applied to the High Court for an injunction preventing journalist Veronica Guerin alleging he was a drug dealer.
He was granted the injunction after claiming her planned article would put his life at risk from "vigilante types". His court action started just before her murder and she was dead by the time the injunction was granted.
Traynor was an associate of John Gilligan, having met him when they both worked in the shipping industry as teenagers. He had been a contact of Guerin for about 18 months before she was killed. He and Gilligan fled to Europe to escape the Garda crackdown after of her killing.
Traynor's arrest in 1997 in the Netherlands in connection with Guerin's murder was somewhat accidental. Gardaí and Dutch police had put a surveillance operation in place in an effort to track down another member of the Gilligan gang, Brian Meehan.
When they moved in to arrest Meehan at an Amsterdam train station, the Dutch police found Traynor in his company and arrested him, too.
Meehan, from Crumlin, Dublin, was extradited back to Ireland and is serving life for Guerin's murder. Traynor was questioned and was released without charge. Gilligan was cleared of the murder in 2001. He was jailed for 28 years for importing cannabis resin. The sentence was reduced to 20 years on appeal.
Traynor's first conviction, for house-breaking, was when he was nine. In 1977 he was jailed for five years after he produced a gun during a pub row in Dublin.
He ran two car garages in Dublin in the 1980s and 1990s. In its first months in operation in 1997, the Criminal Assets Bureau secured a judgment against Traynor for £440,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties.
Much of his criminal activity revolved around cheque and bank draft frauds. He worked with both the INLA and Provisional IRA.
He is believed to have helped Martin Cahill plan the robbery of the Beit art collection from Russborough House in Co Wicklow, and the robbery of O'Connor's jewellers in Harold's Cross, south Dublin, in 1983.