This Kinahan-linked criminal was in custody last night — after elite Garda detectives seized drugs and cash worth more than €2 million.
Sources have confirmed that convicted criminal Barry Fowler (36) was one of two men arrested in the special operation in his native Tallaght, south Dublin yesterday afternoon.
Fowler, only recently released from prison after serving a long stretch for weapons and drugs charges, was arrested in an undercover operation by the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau.
He was arrested after officers stopped a vehicle in Tallaght and found suspected cannabis worth €2.2m in the boot, and nearly €150k cash.
A Garda spokesman last night said that in a search, “110kg of Cannabis Herb (pending analysis) worth €2.2m and approximately €150,000 in cash was discovered and seized by gardai”.
“Two men, aged in their 30s and 50s, have been arrested and are currently detained at Tallaght Garda Station under Section 2 of the Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Act 1996.”
The men can be detained for up to a week on tough anti-drugs legislation.
Sources also confirmed that Fowler is a major target of the anti-gangland DOCB — and is suspected of being linked to the drugs cartel led by Dubai-based mobster Daniel Kinahan (43).
In September 2019, Criminal Assets Bureau mounted a major operation against him and his gang — though he was in prison at the time.
CAB detectives carried out eight searches in Dublin and Co Wexford targeting his mob.
Two jet skis and four Rolex watches were among the items seized in the raids by the CAB.
At the time he was serving a seven and a half year prison term, handed down to him in 2015, after a court heard he led gardai to a van containing more than €370,000 of drugs when he failed to use the indicators on his car.
Fowler, of The Crescent, Millbrook Lawns, Tallaght, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possessing the drugs for sale or supply at Hunters Hall, Hunterswood, Ballycullen, on June 26, 2012. He also pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a sawn-off shotgun and 9mm bullets on the same date.
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