A senior Kinahan mobster has intervened to end a simmering feud on his patch even though he is behind bars, gardai believe.
Sources have revealed that officers think Graham “Wig” Whelan has moved to end a dispute in his native Crumlin.
The 39-year-old, who is serving a three-year jail term in the country’s only supermax prison for money laundering, is suspected of calling for the feud between a convicted drug dealer and a notorious armed robber to come to an end.
Sources said Whelan, who is a pal of MMA star Conor McGregor, is friendly with both sides of the dispute and cracked heads because he did not want either of them badly hurt – or killed.
And sources also said they believed he issued the call for the row to come to an end because he did not want to see an increase in Garda activity in the Crumlin area – which is his powerbase. It’s understood the armed robber central to the feud, who is himself linked to the drugs cartel led by Daniel Kinahan, 44, handed himself in to gardai late last week following Whelan’s intervention.
Officers had been on high alert since several shots were fired at a house in Crumlin just after midnight on Thursday.
Nobody was injured in the attack.
But gardai suspected the armed robber was involved in it and were braced for more incidents.
His rival in the feud, who is a drug dealer, was blamed for a series of petrol bomb and arson attacks in central Dublin in the following days.
Extra Garda patrols were deployed to Crumlin and south inner city Dublin to deal with the rising tensions.
Now gardai believe Whelan has become involved to end the war.
A source said last night: “He has killed it really before it started. The belief is he wanted an end to the feud and he got the word out from his cell that it was to stop.
“We suspect he told [the armed robber] that he didn’t want any more attacks.”
The armed robber, who served a sentence for a serious crime and boasted that he was a senior member of the Kinahan cartel when he was released from jail in recent years, spent several days on the run following the shooting attack.
Members of the Garda SWAT team, the ERU, even raided a property in South Dublin in the hunt for him.
He spent several days on the run, but later handed himself into gardai.
Officers questioned him for several days about the shooting, but he was not charged.
But gardai then took him into custody on outstanding warrants and he was locked up last night.
That, and the suspicion of gardai that Whelan intervened, means officers now believe tensions have eased in the area.
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