Closing in on the Kinahans: How US sanctions are ‘part of an Al Capone approach’

Two explosive chapters book-ended John O’Driscoll’s career as a garda: the vigilante marches on the homes of Dublin drug dealers in the 1990s and the arrival of US law enforcement into the city earlier this year to announce sanctions on the Kinahan cartel.

In the early days, O’Driscoll’s first significant role was to lead a new drugs unit based at Store Street station in north inner city Dublin. It was a time when aggressive street activism against heroin dealers was in full flight in an area ravaged by the drug for more than a decade.

At one highly charged public meeting, Tony Gregory, then Independent TD for Dublin Central, told the newly appointed Sgt O’Driscoll that local gardaí appeared more concerned with “arresting female street traders pushing prams” of fruit than going after big heroin dealers.

O’Driscoll, who has just retired from his post as assistant commissioner of the Garda’s Organised and Serious Crime branch, describes his time on the north inner city streets three decades ago as “the best time of my career”, though he says the pursuit of the Kinahan cartel in recent years “matched it” in terms of pressure and satisfaction.

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When he took charge of the drugs unit in north central Dublin in the mid-1990s, O’Driscoll tried to win over locals such as the Inner City Organisations Network (Icon) and public representatives such as Gregory.

We were watching funerals every week in Sheriff Street and East Wall and wherever else in the inner city; people dying from using heroin. You had a generation wiped out

The force, he says, was already “successful” in the area in that there were lots of arrests and convictions for drug crime. However, most of those cases were for simple possession of small quantities of drugs, usually cannabis, rather than for supplying harder substances.

“So it kept the crime statistics satisfied but it was not what the community wanted and it didn’t reflect the problem as experienced by the community,” says O’Driscoll.

“Typically, about 80 per cent of arrests at the time in Dublin related to cannabis and 20 per cent to the harder drugs. And 80 per cent of drug arrests related to possession charges and 20 per cent to supply charges. And in the north inner city, we turned that on its head. I mean, we were watching funerals every week in Sheriff Street and East Wall and wherever else in the inner city; people dying from using heroin. You had a generation wiped out.”

Operations focusing on the significant figures supplying heroin on to the streets were set up. Each was given a code name and targeted via intelligence gathering, surveillance and searches.

O’Driscoll refers to his notes from the time and lists convictions his unit secured, with long sentences imposed by the courts of “13 years, 12 years; [Tony] Felloni, 20 years; Michael Cronin, 13 years; Derek Mason, 10 years; Fergus Duffy, 10 years ... They were huge sentences.”

He recruited people into his unit who had “empathy” with the local people, he says. Many of the young gardaí in the unit were plucked from community policing roles, where they had built a rapport with people and demonstrated an aptitude for pursuing drug cases.

Three of them — not long out of the Garda College in Templemore at the time — are now among the Garda’s most experienced investigators. Angela Willis was until recently head of the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau and is now assistant commissioner for the Dublin region. Paul Cleary is in charge of the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau and also recently secured promotion to assistant commissioner. Det Chief Supt Séamus Boland is the current head of the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau.

O’Driscoll says the Rabbitte Report — published by then minister Pat Rabbitte in the 1990s — aimed to find a way of tackling drugs in the north inner city and identified a need to replicate the way the Store Street drugs unit operated. He believes there was a lack of understanding as to how the success had been achieved — by winning over and including the community. As a result of this deficit, efforts to roll out similar tactics elsewhere fell flat.

At the time, he says, much of the Garda’s activities were heavily influenced by the need to ensure crime statistics at year end looked positive. And he believes that too great a focus on data persists in some quarters. He told the Policing Authority that data was not the only way to evaluate policing — the significance of the targets caught and jailed is crucial.

Policing failures

He describes the seizure of large quantities of drugs accompanied by no arrests, or the arrest of a low-level driver or courier as “some of the worst policing” and one of the “greatest failures” of any policing organisation.

“First of all, it will be written off as a bad debt by the criminal organisation involved. If you take out that amount of drugs and there’s no other consequences, then you’re educating [the gangs] about what you know. And they can possibly work out ways around it so they won’t lose the next consignment.” He said there was “significant risk aversion” in some international law enforcement agencies, including the Garda.

“People would say, ‘Oh, you’ve information about the location of a gun so just go and [seize] it’. But taking the gun is like taking out a quantity of drugs with no prisoners, or insignificant prisoners. It’s just a bad debt for a gang. But if you get that gun in circumstances where it’s in the hands of the people who are about to murder ... ”

O’Driscoll says catching a murder conspiracy while it is under way requires expensive and time-consuming surveillance. But when suspects are caught and convicted, they are jailed for many years. This takes a “hit team” off the streets and prevents more murders. He stresses that this is especially the case in Irish gangland, where the cohort of criminals willing to carry out contract killings for gangs is small.

He talks about how several Kinahan-linked “hit teams” were thwarted and jailed for lengthy periods — up to 12 years — after being caught while murder conspiracies were under way as part of the gang’s feud with the Hutch group. This had saved the lives of the intended targets and future targets they would have been paid to kill, with the gangland gun murder rate having plummeted in Ireland in recent years as a result.

“If you look at the alternative — just taking out the gun — you don’t go after the hit team and then you later have four or five more murders,” says O’Driscoll.

His time in the force traces the arc of the once poverty-stricken State, with a modest drugs trade, becoming one of the richest countries in the world, with an insatiable appetite for drugs that spawned one of the world’s most wanted crime cartels. And it is that cartel — the Kinahans — that has occupied much of O’Driscoll’s time in recent years.

Garda operations have, since the Kinahan-Hutch feud erupted in 2015, wiped out the cartel’s Irish franchise, the Crumlin-based Byrne organised crime group. The feud operation has also resulted in about 60 people — mostly working for the cartel on money laundering, contract killings or drugs distribution — being jailed for periods of up to life.

While the cartel’s Irish presence is now in ruins, its leadership — Christy Kinahan snr and his sons Daniel and Christopher jnr — remain at liberty in Dubai. However, they are now subject to US financial sanctions and travel bans, the latter also being imposed on about 600 of their associates, who are now prevented from entering the US. Rewards of up to $5 million were also announced by American law enforcement at an event in Dublin Castle in April for information leading to the conviction of the big players.

Targeting the leaders

The decision by the US Department of Treasury, and its Office of Foreign Assets Control, to come to Dublin this year and announce financial sanctions was the culmination of four years’ work, says O’Driscoll. He explains that a telephone conversation with a US Border Protection Agency official in spring 2018 demonstrated to him how the Irish authorities could work with the US to target the cartel leadership in Dubai.

“Within weeks they were here in Dublin with us at a meeting in Dublin Castle. A few weeks later we had a much bigger meeting, with all of the players involved,” he says, referring to British authorities and others joining. “The objective [of financial sanctions] had already been set; the potential action had been recognised.”

I was told [by American sources] that had we not been there, had we not paid that visit, [the Kinahan sanctions] were gone off their list of priorities. But we went over and we were back in business, fortunately

However, when the pandemic struck, that slowed progress and, when a new administration took over in the US, priorities changed. It prompted him to lead a delegation to Washington to visit the key officials at the Department of Treasury. He restated his case for American law enforcement joining the fight against the cartel, underlining the impact the Kinahans’ drugs were having on entire communities.

“Subsequently, I was told [by American sources] that had we not been there, had we not paid that visit, [the Kinahan sanctions] were gone off their list of priorities,” he says, adding that the Americans wanted instead to focus on people involved in environmental crime, a new priority for the Biden administration. “But we went over and we were back in business, fortunately.”

There was “a hugely amount of legal work done” on the Kinahan sanctions by the time Russia invaded Ukraine in February and the Department of Treasury and Office of Financial Assets Control began to focus their efforts on sanctioning the Putin regime.

“We wouldn’t have had a chance then of getting [the Kinahans] on the list of priorities. But because it was in the bag, more or less, it was a minor detail to be coming to Ireland to make the announcement when all the hard work had been done.”

He believes criminal charges will be pressed against the Kinahans in Ireland “based on the way the investigation has been going”. But he also believes it is very possible charges will also be brought against them in other jurisdictions, including the US.

He says those charges could be based on the smuggling of very large quantities of drugs from South or Central America to Europe via US territory. The laundering of money, by moving it through US financial vehicles, could also result in charges. It is something O’Driscoll refers to as “the Al Capone approach”, where money laundering or tax evasion convictions could result in jail time.

“The Department of Treasury sanctions are part of an Al Capone approach and there is potential for criminal charges arising from the whole money end of it, aside from the drugs business,” he says. “And if the Americans gather sufficient evidence to secure convictions for the type of huge drug volume going through their jurisdiction, then you are going to get very, very significant sentences.”