Feud brothers Owen and Brendan Maguire fail to show to contest €300k CAB case

Judge Alex Owens, after considering the evidence against them, found in favour of CAB who wanted two properties, two vehicles, a Rolex watch and €305,000 in cash declared the proceeds of crime/

A receiver has been given the power to sell off the A Class Mercedes Benz, a Ford Transit and the watch worth €16,500.

In making the order Judge Owens said they had very little in regular income over a long period of time and the sworn affidavits by gardai were ‘well-founded’.

“The overall situation points very strongly to the proceeds of crime.”

He said there was nothing in the documents provided to the court to show they could have generated the cash through scrap and car dealing.

He added that the way in which €270,000 was found in a concealed hide and wrapped in bundles was consistent with the proceeds of crime.

Attempts to cover cash transactions by taking out loans were undermined by the “blatantly false documents” used to acquire the money and were paid with criminal cash.

The case was adjourned to allow CAB to investigate if any of the properties, one in Cavan and the other in Monaghan, are occupied before a receiver is cleared to put them up for sale.

The CAB had got clearance last year from the court to deem Owen Maguire as ‘served’ after he consistently refused to engage with officers who called to his Drogheda home.

They were allowed to leave the box of documents at his door after giving evidence they were satisfied the paralysed crime boss was at home.

Maguire has been confined to a wheelchair in which he was shot outside by the slain mobster Robbie Lawlor his home in 2018.

His brother Brendan, who also survived being shot as part of a lethal feud was served his legal papers at his new home in the UK.

Owen Maguire is regarded as the joint head of the Price-Maguire Organised Criminal Gang and which has been involved in a lethal gangland feud in Drogheda since 2018.

He is described in the CAB papers as “a major scale drug dealer” supplying drugs in much of the country’s north-east area who survived being shot six times in a murder bid at his home.

During today’s hearing counsel for CAB said the litany of serious criminal acts contained in the CAB file “brings home the extent and seriousness of the criminality” they are involved in.

When Owen Maguire was shot in 2018, it sparked the Drogheda feud that has resulted in a number of deaths and dozens of tit-for-tat attacks in the town.

Owen Maguire remains reliant on a wheelchair following the shooting while his brother Brendan was also shot and wounded in February 2019.

Meanwhile Corelius Price was struck down by limbic encephalitis which left him in a coma and uncommunicative in hospital for several months.

In one of the CAB affidavits to the High Court it is also stated that “Cornelius Price is an extremely close associate of Owen Maguire and they jointly head the Price-Maguire OCG.”