Wexford home bought by Kinahan cartel criminal Barry Fowler to be seized by CAB

Drug-dealer Barry Fowler and his partner Lorna Palmer previously lost a CAB case after a judge ruled €500,000 in cash and property were the proceeds of crime.

Judge Alex Owens last week agreed to appoint a receiver to the property with the power to take possession of the house which was in Palmer’s name.

Described in court as “her last refuge” the couple had spent €107,527 on the house and grounds at Coolamain, Oylegate, Co Wexford.

The receiver will be able to take control of the property, where her parents had lived, on 1 December and to “engage agents” to sell it.

This week it emerged how another house at Coldwater Lakes at City West, which was “effectively” owned by Daniel Kinahan since 2014, has been officially secured by CAB.

It had been alleged Jim Mansfield Jnr reached a deal with the cartel to repay them money he failed to invest by giving them the house at Coldwater Lakes.

In a previous judgement Judge Owens said Fowler and Palmer had “been living high on the hog of criminal enterprise.”

The pair were “awash with cash” and the evidence in court involved “vast sums of money.”

He described Fowler as “a man of means with no means” and that there was “quite the degree of a luxury lifestyle.”

He ruled the house in Co Wexford in Palmer’s name was bought with the proceeds of crime while Fowler had dropped his opposition to having €99,000 cash seized by CAB.

Also included in the ruling were two jet skis and two mobile homes.

Fowler is currently serving a six-year sentence over a cannabis drugs haul while Palmer recently got 18 months for money laundering.

His close links to the leader of the Byrne Organised Crime Gang also emerged in court which heard he had been seen driving a vehicle used by Liam Byrne and which was later seized by CAB in a separate case.

In March, last year the Sunday World photographed Fowler in a van mocked up to look like a DHL delivery vehicle and dressed in a uniform.

The company had not employed him and previously told the Sunday World anyone with convictions would not pass their strict vetting system.

At Palmer’s money laundering trial in May it was heard how she told gardai she didn’t know why people were posting money through her door where garda found two envelopes with €700 and €2,000 in them.

Gardaí searched the house and found large quantities of cash in two safes and in envelopes inside a money box amounting in total to €99,730.

A garda witness agreed Palmer knew the money was the proceeds of criminal conduct but was “turning a blind eye” to what was going on and was not involved in the criminal activity.