A man wanted by the National Crime Agency for his involvement in the supply of class A drugs worth millions of pounds has been arrested in Lanzarote.
In July 2021, he failed to attend court where he was due to be remanded in custody, and at the end of July a warrant was issued for his arrest. He subsequently failed to surrender to the court again at a further hearing in September 2021.
He was arrested on Wednesday 20 October at a bar in the town of Yaiza, south of Lanzarote, by officers from the Guardia Civil as part of a joint operation with the NCA.
Officers evidenced Vickery’s involvement in large scale drug shipments worth over £23 million at UK street value, as well as movements of cash, with two other men – Thomas Kavanagh, 53, from Tamworth and Daniel Canning, 42, originally from Dublin.
Kavanagh and Canning are both in custody awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to conspiring to import class A and B drugs and money laundering. Canning also pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm and ammunition.
NCA Deputy Director Matt Horne said:
“Vickery was given ample opportunity to return to the UK following his guilty plea, but has failed to come back on every occasion.
“We will ensure those who cause harm to the UK though organised crime are held accountable, and this case highlights our tenacity.
“I’d like to thank the NCA officers here in the UK, and our international liaison team in Spain, who have worked closely with colleagues in the Guardia Civil to locate Vickery.”
Vickery is due to appear before a Spanish court this morning and extradition proceedings for his return to the UK are now in progress.
The gang
Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh has told a court in the UK that he will not accept sentencing on drug and money laundering until he knows what other ‘developments’ there are in relation to him.
Kavanagh appeared in Ipswich Crown Court today in a tracksuit top and glasses as his Counsel Joanne Cecil said that she had clear instructions from him in relation to the long drawn out sentencing hearing.
While she failed to expand on Kavanagh’s ‘straight-forward’ position it appears he fears that other investigations may be on going into his activities in organised crime and wants details of what they are.
He along with his co-accused Daniel Canning and Gary Vickery have pleaded guilty over 15 months ago but their lawyers are in dispute with the Crown about the amount of drugs they agreed to have trafficked in to the UK.
At an earlier hearing it was revealed that the Crown believes they imported an incredible 292 kilos of cocaine and 600-800 kilos of cannabis through a route into Dover which was busted in 2017 when the National Crime Agency and the Garda’s Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau moved in on him.
The tonne of Class A and B drugs could land a two decade prison terms on the trio but they are negotiating to lessen the load and therefore reduce their sentences.
Sources say that Kavanagh fears he is still subject to investigation in Ireland where his weapons man Dec0lan Brady, aka Mr Nobody, was nabbed with an arsenal of guns primed and ready for use in the Kinahan and Hutch feud.
Kavanagh was a right hand man of Daniel Kinahan and for years ran a UK franchise of the Kinahan Organised Crime Gang. His underling Peadar Keating was sentenced this week in Ireland for directing an attempt to murder James ‘Mago’ Gately.
Keating is also suspected of hiring hapless hitman Glen Clarke who murdered innocent Trevor O’Neill and Martin O’Rourke before misfiring his gun and killing himself.
The long running saga of the sentencing of Kavanagh, Canning and Vickery has been littered with confusion regarding bail, Covid 19 restrictions and testings and the unusual threat of a Newton Hearing – a trial within a trial to establish exactly what the trio are pleading guilty too.
Justice Martyn Levett said he would oversee a case hearing on September 27th but hoped to proceed to sentencing in early October, setting aside two days of the court for the proceedings.
Canning and Vickery had remained free despite pleading guilty for over a year as Covid and other complications dogged the case but Canning handed himself in to the UK authorities last month.
However Vickery, who remains on Lanzarote and claimed he couldn’t board a flight as he couldn’t book a Covid test was warned that he has already piled extra time onto his sentence because of repeated breaches of court instructions.
He is subject to a European Arrest Warrant and has failed to show up at the court a number of times already.
He was told if he isn’t in the UK by September 27th to appear in court he will earn a further two years on top of his base sentence and the accumulating time he has already built up.
Vickery appeared via video link and said he understood the situation.
Previously the Judge heard details of the negotiations going on behind the scenes.
All three have pleaded guilty to conspiring to import the drugs into the UK and to money laundering and Canning has pleaded to a further firearms and ammunition charge.
However, they want the Crown to reduce their case regarding the levels of drugs imported.
Riel Karmy Jones QC previously told Judge Levett that the Crown was looking for all parties to agree on a starting position of 20 years in relation to the cocaine trafficking.
Ms Karmy Jones QC said that the Judge could consider the cannabis as an aggravating feature of the overall sentence or it could be used for a small consecutive sentence but he has given no indication regarding what he will do about sentencing warning that the longer no agreement is reached the less credit the three will get for their guilty pleas.
Spanish murders
Russian and Dutch mobsters are embroiled in vicious clashes with Brits in the desperate fight to control the sale and supply of drugs, which is worth about £5billion a year in Spain.
Hell’s Angels are now feared to be trying to muscle in on the trade in resorts and towns across Spain.
And the turf wars are becoming so bloody Spanish cops have called on their British counterparts to help them nail the pitiless monsters behind the latest outbreak of violence.
Dozens of gangs are currently vying for supremacy in the Costa del Sol drugs business because of the vast profits to be made from importing and distributing heroin, amphetamines, cocaine and cannabis.
The gang war is centred on the holiday hotspot of Marbella, which has been dubbed a Costa del Crime bolt-hole because so many British crooks operate there.
And in a region of multi-million-pound yachts, sprawling luxury villas, flash Ferraris, upmarket boutiques and swanky restaurants, the demand for “highs” by the super-rich ex-pats is rocketing.
In 2014 Thomas’s brother Gerrard Kavanagh – a 44-year-old underworld enforcer – was killed by two assassins as he was drinking in a busy bar in the swish Andalusian resort of Elviria near Marbella.
He was shot nine times last Saturday on the terrace of the popular Harmon Bar where he had gone with a mystery woman and a man believed to be one of his sons.
Witnesses said he’d been in the bar for only a minute when the masked men – both dressed in black like ninjas – burst in and opened fire.
One onlooker told police Kavanagh, who was wearing a pair of green shorts, was blasted several times in the back before he was shot once in the head as he lay dying on the floor.
Police later found a burnt-out BMW X3 that they believe may have been the killers’ getaway car.
CCTV footage taken from a business next to the murder scene is believed to have caught the killing on tape.
Spanish detectives are investigating whether the murder is part of a deadly clash between the Irish Kinahan clan – which Kavanagh was linked to – and rival gangs. The dead man was said to be a senior member of a notorious drugs gang run by godfather Christy Kinahan, who is based on the Costa del Sol.
Friends of Kavanagh at the time were searching for the wife of the man who ordered the hit – to exact a bloody revenge.
This shows the historic depths of Narcos in Spain.
