Irish criminal Patrick Holland has been convicted by a London court for his involvment in a plan to kidnap a businessman in return for a ransom of €13m.
The plot was foiled when armed detectives arrested five people last May.
Police say Holland was part of a dangerous gang who were effectively working as ‘contract kidnappers.’
It is almost two years since Patrick Eugene ‘Dutchy’ Holland was released from Portlaoise Prison having completed nine years of a 12-year sentence for possession of cannabis.
When Holland was convicted in 1997 at the Special Criminal Court, he was the first member of John Gilligan's drugs gang to be jailed.
During his trial, Holland was named by a garda witness as a suspect in the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin.
Holland repeatedly denied this allegation during media interviews after being released from prison.
After walking out of Portlaoise a free man in 2006, Holland travelled firstly to Rome and later settled in London.
But in May of last year, he was arrested in Lewisham by armed officers from the Met's Special Project's Team.
Also arrested in London that day were three other men; 47-year-old Gerard Booth from Rostrevor in Co Down, John McDonnell a 45-year-old with an address in Lewisham, London,and 39-year-old Simon Young from Welling in Kent.
The fifth person arrested was a 24-year-old woman, Khan Coombs of no fixed abode.
Ms Coombs’ role in the plot was to flirt with a London businessman and lure him to a particular location where other members of the gang would then kidnap him.
The trial, which ended today at Blackfriars Crown Court in London, heard the gang hoped to get €13m for a ransom.
But unknown to them they were being monitored by London police who moved in before the kidnapping could be carried out.
The jury today returned unanimous guilty verdicts.
