Police officers investigating the activities of the Kinahan crime cartel believe that they have enough evidence from intrusive surveillance to file charges against Daniel Kinahan, the son of gang founder Christy.
The evidence was gathered during an international police inquiry into the activities of Richard Eduardo Riquelme Vega, 42, a Chilean drugs trafficker who was arrested at the Hyatt hotel in Santiago shortly after arriving on a flight from Dubai last November.
Dutch police are seeking Vega’s extradition from South America to stand trial for serious offences, following investigations into the activities of Moroccan criminals based in Holland, Belgium and Spain. Kinahan’s name is said to feature in hundreds of incriminating emails, texts, telephone calls and conversations secretly recorded and intercepted by Holland’s national crime squad during their inquiries into Vega.
The investigation — which also involved police in the UK, Belgium and Spain as well as gardai — established relationships between Vega, the Kinahan cartel and organised crime gangs in several European countries.
Police recorded the conversations of passengers on a long-haul flight as part of the operation.
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Kinahan and members of the cartel may have mistakenly believed their communications were beyond the reach of police because smartphones which use PGP encryption software could not be compromised.
The Kinahan gang uses encrypted handsets which operate from anonymous servers in Europe and America to send and receive texts and emails. Dutch police are said to have defeated the encryption software.
Daniel Kinahan, who describes himself as a boxing promoter and businessman, is currently living in Dubai but intelligence information available to gardai suggests he is planning to relocate to Qatar, or to South Africa, where the cartel has made significant financial investments in the past two years. Kinahan is the beneficial owner of a luxury gym located in Marbella on the Costa del Sol but gardai believe he has plans to build a similar facility in South Africa.
He grew up in Dublin’s south inner city, and is believed by gardai to control the drug trafficking cartel which his father Christopher, aka Christy, established on his release from Portlaoise prison in the 1990s.
The cartel has assets worth up to €1bn, according to investigations carried out by the Criminal Assets Bureau.
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The gardai’s spying and intelligence section believes Kinahan has played a central role in the feud against the Hutch gang which has claimed 14 lives in Dublin to date.