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Kinahans under pressure, ‘selfies with celebrities’ have stopped, Drew Harris says

Irish cartel remains major player in international drug trafficking almost two years after US sanctions but Garda Commissioner believes it has few options outside Dubai

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris: 'There is not, in effect, a second Dubai for them to go to.' Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire

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Conor Lally
Fri Mar 8 2024 - 06:00

The Kinahan cartel was trying to find new avenues to conceal its money now that Daniel Kinahan’s role as a legitimate professional boxing promoter had been destroyed and his “selfies with celebrities” had been brought to a halt, the Garda Commissioner has said.

Drew Harris also insisted members of the cartel based in Ireland, and who were now being released from Irish prisons having served their sentences for Kinahan-Hutch feud crimes, would not be allowed to re-establish themselves.

While cartel founder Christy Kinahan snr and his sons, Daniel and Christopher jnr, remained at liberty in Dubai, along with key allies from Ireland, Mr Harris said the authorities in Dubai, and the wider United Arab Emirates, were proving receptive to Irish efforts aimed at bringing them to justice.

Speaking to The Irish Times in Dubai, Mr Harris said “anything is possible” when asked if the Kinahans may relocate, as has been speculated, to Iran or other countries from where their extradition would be highly unlikely. However, he also believed the Kinahans had very few realistic relocation options, and none that offered them the advantages of Dubai.

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“We know from our contacts here, this is where they are,” he said of the key cartel figures remaining in Dubai despite speculation they had left. “This is a place of legitimate business and money flow but the other places that have been mentioned, maybe not so much. There is not, in effect, a second Dubai for them to go to.”

The Garda Commissioner addressed the World Police Summit in Dubai on Thursday, “embarrassingly” outlining to delegates how the Kinahan cartel started as a small crime gang in Dublin in the 1980s only to become a global player. He also met His Excellency Lieut Gen Abdullah Khalifa Al Marri, commander in chief of Dubai Police, as part of ongoing efforts to foster closer ties.

Speaking at the World Police Summit in Dubai Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said he was "embarrassed" to say the Kinahan crime cartel came from Ireland.

Mr Harris told The Irish Times the leadership of the Kinahan cartel “still have a lot of competence and respect in terms of the movement and trafficking of drugs internationally”. Though the US department of treasury and its office of foreign assets control in April 2022 imposed financial and travel sanctions on the three Kinahans and four of their associates, Mr Harris said those sanctions applied only in the legitimate economy and did not reach into the smuggling of illicit drugs.

However, the sanctions meant concealing and laundering the proceeds of drug trafficking was now much harder. He also noted the public profile of Daniel Kinahan, in particular, had been halted since the sanctions were unveiled and his involvement as a significant boxing promoter, on a global scale, had come to an end.

Daniel Kinahan

“So for Daniel Kinahan, there have been very few selfies with celebrities,” he said. “And prior to [US sanctions] that would have been a regular feature ... sunset images of him here with various celebrity individuals. That’s all stopped [and] the boxing and the interest in sports overall.

“And if you think about the amount of money that moves through sports and the amount of money that moves through sports in the betting industry ... that was a huge, huge risk as well. And all of that now has been, in effect, closed down by the US sanction process. That’s very significant in itself.

“And what we have to be alert to now – and that’s why we’re here – is where is this money going to go in terms of some other form of legitimate business? It’s not going to be, I would suggest, a high-profile, in-your-face business such as [boxing],” he said.

A key weakness for the cartel is its drug-dealing empire “still requires individuals who are capable of facilitating money transfers”. The Garda was “working with Interpol and the Dubai Police to identify” those people.

The Kinahans: Christy, Daniel and Christopher jnr

The Kinahans: Christy, Daniel and Christopher jnr

Mr Harris said the Irish State – meaning both the Government and Garda – was working to put arrangements in place to facilitate greater co-operation between the Irish and emirati authorities in the criminal justice area. This included the bilateral agreement to share information and intelligence between the Garda and Dubai Police. Efforts were also being made to secure the extradition of Dubliner Sean McGovern from Dubai to Ireland, to face a charge of murder arising from the Kinahan-Hutch feud.

While news emerged two years ago a murder charge had been recommended by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr McGovern remains at liberty in Dubai. Mr Harris rejected any suggestion that the authorities in Dubai were possibly engaging in overtures of co-operation with Ireland, perhaps to placate, with no obvious intention of moving on Mr McGovern or the Kinahans.

“Why would they bother placating me?” he said. “And we’re not just coming with a one-trick pony, in terms of the Kinahans. We’re coming to build a relationship; a policing relationship with the Dubai Police which will be to our collective benefit, and they see that themselves.”

[ Garda Commissioner says €1 billion Kinahan cartel an ‘embarrassment’ to Ireland ]

The authorities in Dubai had an “ongoing set of requests” for European authorities who wanted to extradite their citizens based in Dubai who were suspected of serious organised crime offences.

“They are providing a template and we’re now working through the template for the first time,” he said of the effort to extradite Mr McGovern. “It’s a judicial process, they have to be satisfied through their judicial system about what we seek to do. We’re doing it for the first time, but there’s always going to be a first time, and this is it. We’ll work through that, hopefully. And I have every optimism.”

Asked if the three Kinahans would be charged and go before a court, he said: “That’s the whole intention of this. I’ve described it as a long route march and that’s what it is. They’ve set up a global organised crime cartel and it comes down to us, because they are from Dublin, to lead the charge and find partners and work against them.”

While the UAE has always been reluctant to extradite European criminals – and has no extradition agreement with the European Union – suspects can be extradited if agreement can be reached in individual cases.

Ridouan Taghi was two weeks ago sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Amsterdam at the culmination of a six-year-long trial involving 17 defendants and six interconnected gangland killings. Moroccan-born Taghi (46), who was a guest at Daniel Kinahan’s wedding in Dubai in 2017, was regarded as the Netherlands’ most wanted criminal, and one who was out of reach as he lived in Dubai.

However, Taghi was arrested in Dubai in December 2019. He was then very quickly deported back to the Netherlands on the basis that he had entered Dubai on a false passport.

Almost two years later, another man regarded as a key ally of Kinahan’s, Raffaele Imperiale, was also arrested in Dubai. Though the first extradition request for the Italian mafia boss was rejected, the Italian justice minister flew to Dubai to personally deal with the case and the extradition went ahead.

Taghi, Daniel Kinahan and Imperiale, who is currently in custody in Italy, were named by the US authorities as key figures in a Dubai-based super cartel behind about a third of the cocaine imported into Europe.

Mr Harris pointed out the legal and diplomatic process – which is proving protracted – that Ireland has been engaged in around the hoped-for extradition of Mr McGovern has been faced by the UK, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands. But they had managed to get criminals back to their jurisdictions from Dubai.

An extensive Garda investigation had been completed into other leadership figures in the Kinahan cartel and that file was currently with the DPP. However, while extradition to Ireland of key cartel members is favoured by those in Government and policing, Mr Harris stressed bringing the Kinahans to justice was an international endeavour.

“I don’t really care where they go to prison, as long as they are brought to justice; put before a criminal justice [process] somewhere,” he said. “They’ve done so much harm to Irish society, we have an obligation, it’s our duty actually, to protect Irish society and to make sure we are in the vanguard of what’s happening. We can’t, and won’t, just let bigger countries do this for us, because they have other priorities and these people are our priority.”

Mr Harris said the Garda operation that brought down the Irish-based crime group allied to the Kinahan cartel – the Liam Byrne organised crime group – had begun after the 2016 Regency Hotel attack in Dublin, which predated his time as commissioner. It had seen many gang members who were “very prominent” in organised crime jailed. As some of those men were now being freed from Irish prisons, the Garda must “keep on top” of them and thwart any plans they have to re-establish themselves.

“We can’t and won’t let them re-establish themselves in Ireland,” he said, adding the “knowledge, expertise and intelligence” the Garda had now relating to organised crime was far ahead of 10 years ago.

The Kinahans aside, he believed the main domestic drug dealers in Ireland were one part of a “franchise”; effectively playing their role in a much larger international network. However, none of the gangs currently active in the Republic was of a significant scale internationally.

“There’s not a ‘Kinahan organised crime gang II’ in Ireland,” he said. “There are others who may be successful in acquiring drugs. There is a glut of cocaine sitting in Central America and there’s huge amounts of these synthetic opioids being produced. For those who are involved in these networks, there is a route to import drugs, so it’s just not all down the one channel. But still the Kinahan organised crime group would be a major player in terms of the movement of drugs into and through Ireland as well.”

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