Largest Gun Seizure in Spain’s Costa del Sol Linked to Kinahan Cartel

 “Socalj” for Borderland Beat

A massive cache of weapons has been discovered in an “abandoned” arsenal linked to the Kinahan Clan in Spain. It has been reported that the National Police recovered approximately 50 firearms including pistols, rifles, submachine guns, silencers and shotguns, which had the serial numbers erased, in a raid on a house in Málaga, Spain.

An operation that took place in May of last year, a month after the US sanctioned members of the Kinahan family. The raid on a rental house was carried out by the Organised Crime Section of the Drugs and Organised Crime Unit. Inside, officers discovered the secret arms cache in two rooms, hidden inside bags, “but in plain sight.”

Forensic traces link the weapons to the Kinahans, local media has claimed, and their use in possible criminal acts is being investigated. Visual analysis of the different firearms confirmed that all of them had the serial number erased, meaning that they had possibly been acquired on the black market and their probable destination was organized crime.”

In what has been described as one of the largest seizures of its kind on the Costa del Sol, some 30 pistols, rifles, sub machine guns, shotguns, a keychain pistol, and ammunition of all kinds as well as other gear including silencers, GPS beacons for tracking, balaclavas (ski masks), scopes and metal cutting saws were found.

Sources explained that a DNA sample found on one of the items points to the Kinahan Clan. It has also been reported that people who rented the address used falsified documentation and left “hastily” in November 2021, six months before the raid took place. Power and other utilities were eventually shut off, but the home sat abandoned for several months without anyone coming to collect the weapons until the seizure operation took place. Firearms are considered a higher commodity to criminals in Europe than the drugs they smuggle. “This type of gang finds it easier to get 500 kilos of hashish than a gun,” a source explained.

“If they lose a cache like that, they know the next day they have to get a much bigger cache. It's not the same with weapons, if you lose them, it's a problem,” a source told the Spanish news site El Confidencial. “Each of the pistols, rifles and shotguns seized in this important police action is being subjected to a ballistic study to determine if they have been used in any criminal act that is recorded in the databases.”

The Kinahan Clan or Kinahan DTO began in Ireland and expanded into the United Kingdom and beyond. Father Christy Kinahan setup operations in Spain on the Costa del Sol, long a hot spot for drug traffickers and other crims. The family has not only had a large presence on the Costa del Sol, but is also sought internationally by various countries. They fled to Dubai in 2016 following the infamous Regency Hotel shooting attack, of which Gerry “Monk” Hutch, head of a rival criminal clan was recently acquitted of his involvement in the shooting. The gang war surrounding the incident took the lives of nearly 20 people in various countries, including Spain.

The Kinahan network has spanned at least Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Cyprus, Greece, Latvia, Poland, Gibraltar, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Morocco, South Africa, China, Dubai, possibly Iran, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and the United States.

And, of course, on the Costa del Sol, Spain, the organization allegedly ran a network based in Marbella and Estepona that relied on more than 200 companies. The US sanctioned the Kinahan and are offering rewards of $5 million dollars each for leads on the whereabouts of Christy, Daniel and Christy Jr. Kinahan.

Source Sunday World, El Confidencial