Irish Kinahan Cartel Leaders Forced to Flee Dubai

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

The hunt for Daniel Kinahan, the leader of the cartel, his father Christy, brother Christopher Jr and their associates has intensified since the United States offered a collective reward of $15 million USD in April.

The international effort to bring Kinahan and his family to justice is unparalleled in its scale. The cartel, which started out as a small gang in Dublin 30 years ago, is now considered to be truly global in its reach and has assets of at least €1 billion. The $5 million USD bounty placed on Daniel Kinahan, a 45-year-old Dubliner who once enjoyed a successful career as a boxing promoter with heavyweight boxing champ Tyson Fury among his ranks, is said to have caused widespread paranoia in the criminal gang. Daniel's father and brother also have $5 million USD rewards for their arrests and several other associates have had sanctions brought against them. The Kinahans are facing life sentences if extradited to Europe or the United States.

The leaders of the Kinahan cartel have fled their homes in Dubai, where they have been based since 2016 and are said to be moving between the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan. Some have attempted to travel to Asia under assumed names as the international manhunt to bring them to justice intensifies. Because of the imposition of sanctions that prevent them from boarding commercial airlines, they are likely traveling by land and boat as they are unable to fly under their names and could risk recognition. Members of the gang’s middle-management tier have left the Middle East for destinations in the Far East and South America out of fear that they might be arrested and extradited. The security services believe that the cartel, by far the biggest organized crime gang to emerge from Ireland, is in the process of imploding.

Dubai has become a hub of economic growth and a haven for international organized crime figures.

Ireland, Spain, and Dubai

The Kinahan Cartel emerged during Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" period, an era of high economic growth from the 1990s to 2007. Irish media has reported that it holds a virtual monopoly on the import of Peruvian cocaine to Europe, and controls around a third of the total trade of the drug on the continent. Father Christy Kinahan, Sr. was jailed for 6 years in 1987 after pleading guilty to possessing heroin valued at more than €150,000. He was operating a safe house, a luxury apartment that was the nerve center for the distribution of heroin through most of Dublin.

 

Christy Kinahan, Sr. nicknamed "The Dapper Don" ala John Gotti started the family cartel dealing heroin in the 1980s and has been in and out of jail in various countries.

In 1998 Christy was again jailed for four years after he was found in possession of £16,000 in stolen travelers’ checks. He was released from prison in Ireland in 2001, leaving for Spain shortly after. Spanish police say he immediately established international drug-dealing contacts. He has a villa near Marbella valued at €6 million, and also regularly uses a nearby apartment worth €1 million.

In 2010, Christy Kinahan was arrested in Spain as part of a huge operation to smash his alleged global drugs and weapons business, however, thanks in large part to the inefficiency of the Spanish legal system he was released. After a two-year investigation involving the Spanish, Irish, British, Belgian, and Dutch authorities and involving some 700 officers in total, Spanish police moved against Kinahan and his gang with coordinated surprise raids and arrests on Costa del Sol addresses registered to him. More than 30 people were arrested in the so-called “Operation Shovel” throughout Europe, among them Kinahan and several of his associates and family. But after being held briefly, Kinahan and his associates were released without charge. Operation Shovel was unable to find enough direct evidence to link Kinahan to specific crimes he could be charged with. Also as part of the operation, a 34-year-old man named Gary Hutch was arrested in Dublin. The Kinahan gang murdered him in Marbella in September 2015.

Daniel Kinahan has grown the Ireland-based drug dealing gang into a transnational cartel with links to several other organized crime groups.

It was at the time of the father's last arrest that Daniel Kinahan took over operations of the gang and went further international, forming alliances with several foreign organized crime groups. Having lived the lifestyle of a multimillionaire businessman for more than a decade, and operating from Dubai since 2016, Daniel Kinahan and the leadership of his transnational drugs cartel are now living under assumed names. Their associates have also left the emirate for Asia and South America, fearing they might be arrested and extradited as well. Up to 50 of his associates have been jailed both in Ireland and abroad for their crimes with the mob, yet Kinahan has remained a free man. Police in Ireland, Britain, and Spain opened a probe into his operations in 2008, the same year Kinahan jumped bail in Belgium over money-laundering charges.

Anna Sergi, an expert on organized crime from Essex University in Britain, believes that the cartel’s demise is in many ways predictable. “Their name will discourage other gangs from having anything to do with them. They made the mistake of personalizing their brand,” she said. “Organised crime groups are predictable. If you draw attention to yourself, you can be replaced. The people around you will always know when to move unless they need to keep you in place for their own survival and financial reasons. If their criminal network can do business without them, they will go.”

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control published the known addresses of the Kinahan gang’s leadership in Spain, England, the Netherlands, and most recently Dubai. Businesses being targeted include a Dubai-based boxing promotion agency and a luxury drinks firm run from Spain and registered in Scotland.

Daniel Kinahan, 44, fled from Spain in 2017 to the United Arab Emirates after the Kinahan cartel went to war with the Hutch gang, a feud that cost 18 lives. The move to the United Arab Emirates was supposed to provide the gang with a safe location to operate until a coalition of law enforcement agencies led by the US moved against them. Authorities in Dubai have frozen all their known assets, accounts, and credit cards.

It noted that Dubai is a “key” area for organizers and money laundering activities to be carried out which is linked back to the cocaine trade in the EU.

The Kinahan Organized Crime Group saw sanctions against 7 of its members by the US in April 2022.

Network of Cartels, Russian GRU & Terrorist Groups

After becoming Ireland’s most powerful organized crime group, the KTCO quickly transcended international boundaries. Initially distributing South American cocaine and heroin in Ireland, the Kinahans later expanded their narcotics trafficking organization to include the United Kingdom and then throughout mainland Europe. In addition to narcotics trafficking, the Kinahans have engaged in money laundering, firearms trafficking, and murder. Gregory Gatjanis, associate director of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Global Targeting, said Kinahan associates also trafficked drugs on American soil and were deemed as big a threat to national security as Japan’s Yakuza, Italian organized crime groups, or the Russian underworld groups.

The US is offering a total of $15 million in rewards for the Kinahan family leaders.

In April 2022, the US announced sanctions against the organization along with large $5 million USD rewards each for Daniel, his father, and his brother Christy Jr. This resulted in the security services being provided with evidence linking the gang to organized crime syndicates around the world, as well as to jihadist terrorist groups in the Middle East and Asia. Investigators have established that the gang has been providing money laundering services to jihadist organizations in the region, some with affiliations to al-Qaeda. American law enforcement agencies have also linked the Kinahans to South American and Mexican drug cartels.

In 2017, one of Kinahan's main cocaine suppliers based in Chile, nicknamed "El Rico", was arrested. El Rico is suspected of moving drugs into Holland, Spain, Germany, Ireland, and the UK. He is also implicated with the Russian mob. Police also seized a number of encrypted electronic devices. The phones confirm who he has been working with within Europe, including in Ireland. El Rico was convicted of operating a ring of hitmen and money laundering receiving an 11-year sentence.

Detectives in Dublin asked that any information garnered from the Chilean investigation regarding Irish interests be passed on. The Kinahan cartel then leaned heavier on a supplier they have in northern Colombia. Revelations about the Kinahan presence in Colombia came to light shortly after Colombia arrested one of its most-wanted men, Dairo “Otoniel” Antonio Úsuga, head of the Urabeños drug trafficking group who was recently extradited to the US. In 2017, a suspected Kinahan associate was murdered and dumped in a ravine near Medellín, Colombia. This hit was reportedly carried out by the Oficina, formerly known as the Oficina de Envigado, in retaliation for a seized drug load. A number of large seizures by Garda units left Ireland with an impending cocaine shortage at the time. 

The Kinahans have also been linked to Mexican drug cartels, including the notorious Sinaloa cartel once led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and also Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah in the Middle East, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. They have also been connected to the Iranian regime and possibly to Russia’s intelligence services, through their involvement with ransomware gangs in Europe and Russia.

The Kinahans’ involvement with jihadist groups and Mexican cartels explains, in part, why they have become a top priority for US law enforcement. America is still waging a war on jihadist groups in the Middle East and Asian countries such as Afghanistan as they pose a threat to the US homeland. “Drug dealing is one thing. Supporting jihadists is another,” one intelligence officer said.

Moign Khawaja, a Dublin City University-based expert on jihadist groups, suspects that the discovery of the Kinahans’ involvement with jihadists played a central role in encouraging Dubai to move against the gang. “Dubai takes jihadism very seriously. Extremism is not tolerated there. Jihadist involvement with criminal gangs is taken seriously,” he said. “Jihadis will do business with anyone as long as it’s not their immediate enemies. These links are usually forged through middlemen in the Middle East. ISIS had dealings with state and non-state actors in the Middle East”.

A famous seizure of 9.5 tons of cocaine by Cape Verdean police on a ship with Russian sailors on January 31, 2019.

The Kinahan cartel has also been working alongside elements of Russia's military intelligence organization GRU to facilitate the supply of drugs across Europe, an expert on international terrorism has revealed. Artem Kruglov has claimed the Irish cartel has worked in a joint "business project" involving Colombian drug traffickers and the GRU. The GRU is the foreign military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - and has been described as Russia's FBI.

The Kinahans lived in Marbella in the south of Spain for a long time, then moved their headquarters to Dubai until recently. Their personal protection comes from GRU special forces veterans. "According to the Western press, Christy Kinahan even learned Russian to facilitate contacts with the GRU, which, in addition to ensuring the personal safety of the cartel bosses, deals with the supply of weapons for him and aids them in money laundering."

"El Rico" was the cartel's main supplier of cocaine from South America until his arrest.

European Super Cartel

Daniel Kinahan's wedding in 2017, the same year he set up his base in Dubai, at the seven-star Burj al Arab in Dubai was a focus point for investigators. Attended by friends and associates of Kinahan, as well as senior underworld figures, happened as Dutch police began to investigate claims by a witness called Nabil B who linked underworld mobsters Ridouan Taghi, Ricardo Riquelme Vega, aka El Rico, jailed assassin Noufal Fassih and Italian Camorra figure Raffaele Imperiale - who all attended the wedding.

Six months later, PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) messages discovered on a server in Canada provided the hard evidence that sealed the alliance of the 'super cartel' suspected of moving almost €30 billion of cocaine into Europe. This so-called super cartel consists of Daniel Kinahan, Naoufal ‘Belly’ Fassih, Italian Camorra figure Raffaele Imperiale, and Bosnian trafficker Edin Gacanin of the Tito & Dino cartel. The latter pair also had resided in Dubai. The DEA regards this "super cartel" as one of the world's fifty large drug cartels, with a virtual monopoly on the Peruvian cocaine trade and would control around a third of the cocaine trade in Europe. According to the DEA documents, the destination for all the drug shipments would be the Dutch ports, some 33 metric tons in 2018.

“At present, Kinahan is the last member of the consortium still at large,” InSight Crime says in an examination of the Dubliner’s role in organized crime. Another member of the cartel was allegedly Ridouan Taghi. Taghi hit the headlines when a Dutch lawyer for a state witness in a case against him was shot dead near his home in Amsterdam. Dutch-Moroccan Taghi is currently locked up in the Netherlands as he awaits trial for a series of murders there. He was booted out of Dubai in 2019 following his arrest for having a false passport. Kinahan narrowly escaped being arrested himself as part of the operation when he went to a hotel in Dubai to meet lawyers acting for Taghi.

Camorra boss Raffaele Imperiale was arrested last year in Dubai.

Raffaele Imperiale, allied with the Scissionisti, was arrested in Dubai in 2021, after six years on the run from authorities of his native Italy. He had previously been questioned there in 2013 and 2014 in relation to allegations of drug trafficking. He was wanted for questioning in Italy in relation to theft, money laundering, and extortion. A pair of Van Gogh paintings stolen in Amsterdam in 2002 had been found in 2016 inside a farmhouse on a property belonging to Imperiale.

Daniel Kinahan and World Heavyweight Champion Boxer Tyson Fury.

Boxing Promoter

Daniel Kinahan’s ventures into the world of boxing promotions have also ended. Hundreds of his associates, including professional boxers and pundits, have been banned from entering the US because of their past associations with him. Among them are the Sky Sports pundit Matthew Macklin and the world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury.

Daniel Kinahan and World Heavyweight Champion Boxer Tyson Fury.

Daniel Kinahan is a co-founder of the MTK Global agency (formerly MGM which was dissolved following the attack during a weigh-in at the Regency Hotel in 2016), which represents a number of boxing's top fighters, including Tyson Fury and Michael Conlan. Mr. Kinahan says he cut ties with the company in 2017. While Kinahan claims he is no longer associated with the agency, last year Fury expressly thanked him for organizing a high-profile bout with then-world champion Anthony Joshua and Fury was photographed in Dubai with Kinahan.

Kinahan with boxing promoter Bob Arum.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said he was “taken aback” by Daniel Kinahan’s involvement in arranging the fight between British boxers Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. Daniel Kinahan has no criminal convictions but is wanted in multiple countries. Legendary boxing promoter Bob Arum, who has worked with the top boxers for decades including Mohammed Ali, announced that Daniel Kinahan was still "an advisor" to the boxing management company MTK. "Dan is like the captain when it comes to the practicalities of doing a fight in the Middle East," he said. "He’s one of my favorite guys. I like to deal with guys, no-nonsense people, whose word is their bond." The two spent days together in Dubai and in Khazakstan.

Champ Tyson Fury, represented by MTK thanked Daniel Kinahan for brokering his biggest fight.

The CEO of MTK, Sandra Vaughan insisted that he was not employed by the company or an advisor to the company but was in fact an advisor to boxers and had recommended MTK to them as a management company. "The reason that we got Tyson Fury is that he was recommended to us through Daniel, which I am totally grateful for and that happens all the time and I hope it continues to happen." World Boxing Council President Mauricio Sulaimán offered his "full backing" to the Irishman's continued involvement after a meeting in Dubai.

Bahrain-based sports company KHK.

In 2020, it emerged that Kinahan had been appointed as a special advisor for a sports company in Bahrain. Despite the links to criminality, he now has the potential to control the boxing business in the Middle East. KHK Sports, announcing the new role, described him as an “international boxing power broker”. Kinahan issued a statement saying, "It is an honor for me to work with His Highness Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al-Khalifa, Mr. Mohammed Shahid, and the entire team at KHK Sports. KHK Sports has made an impressive mark on the world of combat sports and has fantastic ambitions to grow into a global powerhouse. I look forward to working with the team to realize these dreams and further build Bahrain combat sports into a globally recognized presence."

Kinahan has long been involved in the boxing world. In 2012, he set up what was then known as MGM Boxing. It gained notoriety after its Clash of the Clans event in February of 2016 was stormed by gunmen at the Regency Hotel in Dublin. One man was shot dead and another two were injured.

Regency Hotel Shooting 

Since 2014, the Kinahan cartel has been blamed for killing a string of former members accused of pilfering vast sums from drug deals, and this has brought him into a war with the Hutch gang, who previously operated with Kinahan drug traffickers in Ireland. Gerry "The Monk" Hutch was Daniel's right-hand man and relayed Daniel's orders to members. A nephew, Gary Hutch, was gunned down in Spain in September 2015 after reportedly rebuffing the demands of Kinahan men for a six-figure payment.

Gary Hutch's murder in Spain set off the feud that would last years and see 18 murders.

The feud in Ireland between the once allied faction of the Hutch gang and the Kinahans culminated in a brazen public attack the following year, the shooting was akin to a terrorist active shooter situation. On February 5, 2016, a six-man team of gunmen, allegedly from the Hutch camp targeted Kinahan men at the Regency Hotel for a boxing event's weigh-in.

 

Kevin Murray and possibly Patrick Hutch (dressed in drag) were photographed carrying handguns after the shooting by a photojournalist.

The planned attack consisted first of an older man, Kevin Murray, and Patrick Hutch, dressed as a woman in drag entering the room of the boxing weigh-in, opening fire and wounding associate Sean McGovern while looking for Daniel Kinahan. They were captured on cell phone video and by a newspaper photographer upon exiting the hotel. 

The first attack was quickly followed by a trio of gunmen, dressed as police gardai, wearing balaclavas, helmets, and bullet-proof jackets carrying AK-47 rifles. They were captured on CCTV in the hotel just as the first shooting took place. They shot additional men, killing one David Byrne, a close associate of Daniel Kinahan. It was the prosecution's case that Patrick Hutch was the man dressed as a woman and that he did not shoot Mr. Byrne but was part of a "shared intention" to commit the offense. Murder charges were dropped against Patrick Hutch and he also denied possessing the AK-47 rifles used in the slaying. 

Kevin Murray, the man in the flat cap, passed away in 2017 before coming to trial. He had been suffering from motor neuron disease, which is possibly why he did not bother to disguise himself like the other gunmen had. Murray was long connected to the Irish republican groups, likely a member of RAAD which is thought to stand for Republican Action Against Drugs. RAAD merged with the Real IRA in 2012, but Murray had run afoul of the paramilitaries leading to his hiring by the Hutch clan.

Ireland’s police force deployed military-style road checkpoints as the government announced toughened measures to try to prevent a gang war in Dublin from claiming more lives after the Regency Hotel shooting in 2016. It was announced at an emergency meeting with police chiefs following that night’s killing of a brother of Gerry “The Monk” Hutch, a gang chieftain credited with directing many of Ireland’s most famous bank heists. Eddie Hutch, Gerry Hutch’s brother, was gunned down in his Dublin home on February 8, just three days after the Regency attack. Six weeks later, Noel Duggan, a known cigarette smuggler and close friend of Gerry Hutch, was shot dead. On May 24, Gareth Hutch, another of Gerry Hutch’s nephews, was gunned down in a Dublin street. Since then, four more men linked to Hutch or accused of working for him have been killed in Ireland. In another case of mistaken identity, Martin O’Rourke was shot in Dublin on April 14. As of June 2018, Gardaí have seized 456 firearms, €2.2 million in cash, and €64 million worth of drugs in their efforts to tackle the feud.

An Irish Republican Army faction with links to Dublin organized crime claimed responsibility for the hotel attack. But that group, the Continuity IRA, issued a second statement shortly after saying it was not involved. Police say IRA factions are involved in supplying weapons to, and demanding protection money from, their criminal rivals. The Dublin leader of the Real IRA splinter group was killed in 2012 in alleged retaliation for his efforts to extort money from Kinahan gang members.

Undercover gardai whose identities are to be kept secret were monitoring the movements of Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch, Jonathan Dowdall, and others in the days following the Regency attack. Shane Rowan, an IRA member, was caught driving a vehicle carrying the three AK-47-type rifles used in the attack in March 2016. The night he was arrested he met with Patsy Hutch and met numerous times with other Hutch members previously. Rowan also served four concurrent years in prison for IRA membership and was freed in October of 2021, after spending just five years behind bars in total. 

Gerry "The Monk" Hutch once worked with the Kinahan clan but his gang's specialty was multi-million dollar robberies.

Gerry “The Monk” Hutch just recently started his trial for his role in ordering the Regency Hotel shootings and other murders. In April 2021, he became the subject of a European Arrest Warrant as Gardaí said they had enough evidence to charge him with murder in connection with the shooting of David Byrne. He was arrested in Spain in August 2021 and extradited the following month. Jonathan Dowdall is also charged with the murder.

In one bizarre incident, a rap video called Major Plans by artist J Spades was released on YouTube which appeared to blame the gardaí for “allowing” the Regency attack to happen as the response time to the shooting was nearly 30 minutes.

Source Sunday World, Daily Mail, US Treasury, US State Department, BBC, US State Dept, The Journal, Irish Mirror, Irish Mirror, Politico, El Pais, El Pais, The Sun, Independent, The Journal, RTE, Sunday World, InSight Crime, RTE, Irish Mirror