James McGovern

THE Kinahan cartel hit team run by Sean ‘Knife’ McGovern spent months stalking the partner of ­target James ‘Mago’ Gately.

The Irish Sun today reveals shocking details of the cartel’s obsession to murder the Hutch associate.

As part of their efforts to kill Gately, McGovern’s lackeys placed two tracking devices on the Volkswagen Passat driven by Gately’s girl Charlene Lam, 38.

A tracker was also recovered from a Toyota Avensis driven by an innocent relative of Gately, 39.

The devices were deployed in February 2017 as McGovern’s hit squad hunted gangster Gately in Dublin and also in the North.

Their plans to recruit notorious hitman Imre Arakas, 68, to kill Gately ended in failure when the Estonian contract killer was arrested by the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau in Dublin on April 4, 2017.

Former Det Sgt Greg Sheehan, who was part of the Garda team that tracked Arakas after his arrival into the country, told how McGovern’s murder squad were “desperate” to kill Gately.

Mr Sheehan said: “Gately was the number one target for the Kinahan group in Ireland at the time because Gerry Hutch was out of the country. They weren’t going to stop until Gately was dead.

“They spent months trying to find Gately and that included placing surveillance on people close to Gately who weren’t part of the feud.

“They hoped innocent people could lead them to Gately’s ­location. They placed the trackers on the girlfriend’s car and another relative in an attempt to establish the movements of Gately.

“Thankfully, they were unable to complete their plan and this was due to the excellent investigation undertaken by the GNDOC and their colleagues in the Gardai.”

On Monday, Dubliner McGovern sensationally pleaded guilty to directing a criminal organisation during the murder of innocent grandad Noel Kirwan, 62, in December 2016. He also copped to the plot to kill Gately in April 2017.

Mr Sheehan told us: “At the time of the plot to kill Gately, McGovern was one of the Kinahan group’s main representatives in Ireland.

“The evidence against McGovern was of a very high standard and I think it’s quite significant to see someone of his standing in organised crime plead guilty to two very serious offences.”

Following McGovern’s guilty pleas, we can reveal the full role McGovern played in the plot to kill the Hutch associate, who also survived being shot five times at a petrol station in Clonshaugh, Dublin, in May 2017.

Gardai first identified McGovern’s role in the Gately plot when he was spotted at Dublin Airport with associate Peadar Keating, 44, in a white Volkswagen Caddy van on March 28, 2017.

The senior cartel leader was also identified on March 30 and was wearing a black and white cycle top and orange trainers.

Officers also watched as he took a racing bike from the back of the ­vehicle and cycled to his home on Kildare Road, in Dublin’s Crumlin.

Gardai later established how McGovern had been driven to Northern Ireland on both days in a Peugeot van to place surveillance on Gately’s hideout at College Court, Belfast.

Exclusive CCTV shows cartel loyalist Keating outside Gately’s bolthole at 1.53pm.

Gardai later concluded: “Sean McGovern is nowhere to be seen — he is in the back of the van which has blacked out windows.

“He cannot afford to be seen by James Gately. They watched the entrance to the apartment complex for 30 minutes.”

Investigators also established how McGovern bought a €139 SatNav device in Dundalk, Co Louth, to help find Gately’s address.

The device — first turned on at 12.51pm on March 28 — was later recovered by cops and included the co-ordinates for Gately’s hideaway.

Just five days before driving to Belfast, McGovern and Keating flew to the UK from Dublin Airport on Aer Lingus flight E13264 at 9.36am to meet an associate of drugs kingpin Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh.

Gardai believe the pow-wow was arranged to finalise details of the van being brought to Ireland to place surveillance on Gately.

Once they established Gately’s location, cartel associate Douglas Glynn, 41, placed a tracking device on Gately’s Toyota Avensis on March 30, 2017.

The tracker was later discovered by the PSNI’s Reactive and Organised Crime Department at 3pm on April 4, 2017.

Aware he was actively being targeted by McGovern’s hit team, the Hutch criminal later fled Belfast.

We also show a pic of Glynn in Dublin just hours after he placed the device on Gately’s vehicle.

In their file to the Director of Public Prosecutions over Arakas, Gardai concluded McGovern was a “major figure” in the Kinahan Organised Crime Group.

They said: “The arrest of Arakas was a major breakthrough for ­gardai involved in relation to the response of An Garda Siochana to the vicious and sustained campaign that has been mounted by the Kinahan Organised Crime Group.

“The search of a property yielded a crucial piece of evidence — an open email thread on a Blackberry between Imre Arakas and his paymaster Daniel Kinahan.

“In this email thread they discuss the preparation work the Kinahan OCG have done to assist Imre Arakas in assassinating James Gately, a former member of the gang but now an arch enemy following the murder of his childhood friend and fellow criminal Gary Hutch.

“This investigation focuses on the roles played by Peadar Keating and Sean McGovern, who were conducting surveillance on members of James Gately’s family and his partner with a view to establishing his whereabouts.”

The file also said: “This investigation will also focus on the logistical capabilities of the Kinahan crime group.

“They have in effect a private army with the financial ability to make things happen.

“The importing of clean vehicles from their criminal network in the UK, the renting of apartments, the purchasing of burner mobile phones, encrypted private communication networks, numerous tracking devices, satellite navigation devices, days conducting surveillance on their intended targets and their array of automatic firearms is a worrying development in this country.

“However, it was the Kinahan gang’s use of technology that has led to their undoing.”

McGovern, 41, is the seventh member of the hit team to be prosecuted over the murder plot.

The others were Arakas, veteran criminal Stephen Fowler, 66, ­Clondalkin criminal David ‘Blinky’ Duffy, 38, former Hutch associate Douglas Glynn, cartel associate Martin Aylmer, 39, and Keating.

Others linked to the plot include drug dealer Daniel Canning, 47, who was part of the Kinahan ­cartel’s UK branch.

He was responsible for bringing five trackers into Ireland from the UK in January, 2017.