Gangland Shootings part 4 - Read OP before posting - updated 30/12/23

Is that Steven Gerrard's daughter young Byrne is going out with?

I doubt you'd get much political correctness in there.

Kinahans on the run as drugs cartel disintegrates

John Mooney

Sunday September 11 2022, The Sunday Times

"The leaders of the Kinahan cartel have fled their homes in Dubai and are 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.

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 last April for information leading to their arrest. The cartel’s leadership is stranded in the Middle East at present because of the imposition of sanctions which prevent them from boarding commercial airlines. They are travelling by land and boat as they are unable to fly.

The reward announcement resulted in the security services being provided with evidence linking the gang to organised 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 organisations in the region, some with affiliations to al-Qaeda. American law enforcement agencies have also linked the Kinahans to Mexico’s cocaine cartels, which have been responsible for smuggling vast quantities of drugs into the US, murdering thousands of people in the process in bloody gangland wars.

The bounty placed on Daniel Kinahan, a 45-year-old Dubliner who once enjoyed a successful career as a boxing promoter, is said to have caused widespread paranoia in the criminal gang. The Kinahans are facing life sentences if extradited to Europe or the United States, where the authorities believe they have amassed sufficient evidence to charge them with multiple crimes. As a result, senior members of the gang have altered their appearances, become wary of using trackable technology and distanced themselves from their spouses, partners and children.

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 organised crime gang to emerge from Ireland, is in the process of imploding. The intelligence suggests that new figures are beginning to assert themselves within the group, possibly with the intention of taking control.

Financially, the cartel has suffered significant losses since April when the US authorities announced sanctions against its leadership. It has also lost tens of millions which it had invested in cryptocurrencies, which have collapsed in value. Having lived the lifestyle of a multimillionaire businessman for more than a decade, 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.

When Kinahan, his father Christy and brother Christopher Jr became aware they were the target of sanctions by the United States last April, they immediately made arrangements to go underground, leaving their homes in Dubai, from where they had run their global criminal organisation since 2016. 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.

Fearing the inevitable, the Kinahans knew precisely what to do. They abandoned their smartphones and other trackable technology and took to travelling over land and by sea, having been prevented from flying on commercial airlines by the US sanctions. The Kinahans are flitting between various countries, their movements made possible by networks of criminal gangs, corrupt police and immigration officers, terrorist groups and fraudsters, who provide them with shelter and false travel documents.

At the same time the cartel they once controlled is collapsing, splintering into subgroups which may attempt to seize control of the organisation. To boot, the authorities in Dubai have frozen all their known assets, accounts and credit cards.

Anna Sergi, an expert on organised 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 personalising 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 international effort to bring Kinahan and his cohorts 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. It has assets of at least €1 billion. The issuing of the $15 million collective bounty on the gang’s heads by the US led to the authorities receiving intelligence from across the world, which has astonished the policing agencies tasked with bringing the family and their associates to justice.

What started last April as a police assault inspired by Garda Headquarters on the cartel’s leadership and assets has turned into an international dragnet led by policing, intelligence and defence agencies from around the world. The Kinahans have since been linked to Mexican drug syndicates, including the notorious Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, but also Islamic terrorist organisations in the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan, from where they source drugs and provide money laundering services. The Kinahans are not the only criminal group to liaise with jihadists, but they may be the most blatant about it.

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”.

To add to its woes, the cartel has lost tens of millions, possibly more, as the combined market value of the world’s top cryptocurrencies crashed by more than $2 trillion last June, wiping out gains in bitcoin and ether. The Kinahans were early adopters of virtual currencies such as bitcoin since digital currencies allowed the gang to hold large amounts of illicit money which could be accessed easily from anywhere in the world. That now presents a security risk to the fugitives as policing agencies have become able to trace movements of bitcoin, and those using it.

Aside from the collapse in value of its digital holdings, the cartel’s finances are also the subject of multiple money- laundering inquiries by police agencies around the world. This, coupled with the fact that the Kinahans can no longer access bank accounts held in their own names or by front businesses, has put the gang under huge pressure, gardai say. 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.

However, the cartel has not gone away. The intelligence services suspect its leaders are actively trying to make their way across Asia, perhaps to the Far East, where some governments or security services might tolerate their presence in return for bribes, which in a nightmare twist might help them solidify their position in the global underworld."

Not related but is kinda related at the same time ……

How do ye reckon yer man Enoch Burke will get on inside. I’d say he could have a lot of people that would agree with him.

i assume he is isolating for the foreseeable future but would he mix with the general prisoners all the same at some point ?

Addicts most likely. Another source had more info - the flat was owned by the Peter McVerry Trust and had a user living in it.

Thought that soon as l heard other people were coming and going from that flat! They must have been well out of it not to notice or even smell a dead body! Or just didn't care! Has he been identified yet?

Knew they were Council flats, didn't know McVerry had any there though. Thought there were rules about staying in a McVerry place? He must have some family out there who maybe don't even know he's dead yet! Heard horrific head injuries. Horrible way to die.

Does anyone know why though? Or what was the reason behind it? I'm about 10 mins from Enfield and nobody seems to know anything about it. Its still all rumours amd hearsay but no concrete facts so far.

Tony was punting crack around thr City has been for years would of been with rattigan through his family (Eddie dempsey) apparently he fell out with rattigans young cousin who runs things for Brian with his sister and Brian rang tony, Tony told him he'd give Sharon 2 in the head. Fast forward to last month a car pulled up to him and chsed him through basin lane flats.

Story going around was he got a call to drop Rock to Kevin Barry and when he went in he was attacked it was a set up. 2 names floating about for it but not arrested yet. He was only a kid, not a bad kid either. RIP Toe.

Any relation to Vicky Dempsey etc?

Reads like an episode out of the Wire! Terrible way to die..

How often does this happen though! very sad if true addiction is a terrible disease.

Same Tony that bit the ears off his mate in Donegal a few years ago?

Yea Carlow bro bang on

Yes bang on bricks !

Johnny Morrissey arrested in Spain.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/crime/major-blow-to-kinahan-cartel-as-key-member-johnny-morrissey-is-arrested-in-the-costa-del-sol-41990264.html

Big fat lump. Apparently he tried to put a hit out on the then head of the CAB decades ago.

I read he was linked to just under 40 murders in the UK, dunno how true that is as it's coming from the papers but if true shows how sadistic this guy was. I never heard of him until the US named him earlier this year though.

video of it here

Would you be that braindead to leave all that evidence laying about the apartment?

What account are they from?