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Daniel Kinahan was ordered by a Dubai court to pay millions of euro to a former business associate over a failed business venture, legal records show.
However, the 46-year-old Dublin man, who has been named as one of the leaders of the Kinahan drugs cartel that is behind much of the cocaine smuggled into Europe, successfully appealed the order on a technical legal point.
Details of the legal dispute are revealed in Dubai court documents obtained by The Irish Times. It follows an investigation known as Dubai Unlocked carried by The Irish Times, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and media outlets around the world.
The investigation shows the Kinahan family has been coming under increasing pressure since the announcement of wide-ranging US sanctions targeting the gang’s leadership.
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The family has been involved in various local legal disputes and has sold off a number of valuable properties, registered in the name of Kinahan’s wife Caoimhe Robinson. Its various public businesses have either been shut down by the authorities or closed voluntarily, leaked documents show.
According to legal documents, in 2020 a Dubai court ordered Daniel Kinahan to pay Abu Bakr Hamad Ali Muhammad Al-Muhairi €2.51 million plus “legal interest at a rate of 9 per cent annually”, various administrative fees and €750 in legal costs.
The debt related to a “project and partnership, which was not realised in practice”, legal documents state.
Also mentioned in the court documents are two other former business associates of Kinahan, Hadif Mohammed A Binhuwaidin Alktebi and Sarfraz Ali Riast Ali.
A previous Irish Times/ICIJ investigation revealed Mr Alktebi owned 51 per cent of Haizum General Trading LLC, a company set up in the Dubai free trade zone in 2016.
The other shareholders were Daniel Kinahan, who owned 30 per cent, and his brother Christopher Kinahan jnr, who owned 19 per cent. Dubai laws requires the majority of a company’s shares to be held by a UAE national.
Mr Riast Ali, a Pakistani national who lived in Dubai, had previously been granted power of attorney by both Kinahan brothers to act for them in business matters.
[ Kinahan investigation: How the cartel’s Dubai properties were secretly sold off ]
Haizum, that was set up to trade in “grains, pulses and sugar”, has since ceased training. Dubai company records list its business licence as “cancelled”.
After a Dubai judge ruled in 2020 that Daniel Kinahan was liable for the €2.51 million debt, he quickly lodged an appeal on several grounds.
These include that the claimant, Mr Al-Muhairi, had failed to lodge a notice of the case in both Arabic and English language newspapers, as is required by law if one of the parties is a foreigner. Instead, the notice only appeared in Arabic.
Kinahan also claimed Mr Al-Muhairi had failed to exhaust all other means of contacting him, including by posting a notice outside his home, before placing the notice in the newspaper.
He also claimed he had been misled, through “fraud, deceit and deception” by Mr Riast Ali and Mr Alktebi into signing a document acknowledging the debt, a court judgment states.
Gangster's Paradise: How the Kinahans secretly make millions on property in Dubai
An appeal court judge later sided with Kinahan and nullified the order that he pay over €2.51 million on the grounds he was improperly notified. He also ruled Kinahan was entitled to legal costs.
Other legal cases uncovered by the Dubai Unlocked investigation include a dispute involving Caoimhe Robinson relating to the seizure of a large completed villa in the Wadi Al Safa 5 district of Dubai.
Ms Robinson purchased the villa in 2023 for almost €2.2 million. It was later seized and put up for auction due to an ownership dispute involving its previous owners. Ms Robinson won the case and was awarded €50,500 in damages.
Kinahan is also involved in a dispute over an office property he owes in the X3 tower in central Dubai which served as the base for several Kinahan-linked companies, including MTK Global, Ducashew General Trading and Haizum General Trading.
Kinahan sought to sell the office last year but was blocked as it is currently subject to a legal dispute, records show. He also owes €15,622 in service fees, a sum which will have to be cleared before any sale can take place.
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