Kinahan cartel: hunt for gang now linked to Iran and Hezbollah

Christy Kinahan was once known as an “ordinary decent criminal” on the streets of Dublin — and was virtually unheard of outside them. He burgled houses, stole cars and forged cheques in the 1970s before being jailed for drug possession in 1987.

Prison changed him. He immersed himself in education and when he was released five years later set about building a criminal organisation that would become one of the most feared in the world. The cartel, which he runs with his sons Daniel, 45, and Christopher Jr, 42, sits at the apex of transnational crime. It has forged alliances with Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, the Italian ’Ndrangheta and the Vory, Russia’s organised crime fraternity.

Now the family is under investigation for supporting Iran and its Shia proxy Hezbollah, a relationship that has become the overriding problem for the US Treasury and Drug Enforcement Administration and their allies in European law enforcement.

Earlier this year, British counter-terrorism officers revealed that police and the security services had foiled 15 plots by Iran to either kidnap or kill “enemies of the regime”. It came after Iran International TV closed its London studios on the advice of the Metropolitan Police, who said they could not keep the staff and public safe.

John O’Driscoll, a retired assistant Irish garda commissioner who lobbied Washington to pursue the Kinahans, said the US regarded the cartel as posing a direct threat to American interests and also the global order. “The American authorities have taken the view that while the cartel may not be involved in supplying drugs into the United States, the Kinahans’ reckless involvement in financing Hezbollah and international terrorism is another matter,” he said.

Ties to Dutch assassin

The first evidence of the cartel’s connections to Iran and its allies emerged in 2016 when Naoufal Fassih, a Dutch criminal of Moroccan origin, was found living in a Dublin apartment under the assumed name of Omar Ghazouani.

Fassih, 42, had the appearance of a streetwise but uber-wealthy drug dealer. He lived in splendour in the city centre, wore trainers worth €800 and his special edition watch cost €40,000. Detectives investigating gangland murders linked to a feud between the Kinahans and their rivals in Ireland’s Hutch crime organisation had gone to the apartment after it was identified as a safe house used by gunmen loyal to the Kinahans.

To the surprise of the Irish security services, Interpol told the garda that Fassih was a wanted man. The Dutch were seeking him in connection with the 2015 murder of Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi, a 56-year-old Iranian sentenced to death by Tehran. Samadi was accused of planting a bomb at the Islamic Republic party’s headquarters in Tehran in 1981, killing 73 people, and was living with his wife and family under an assumed name in Almere, a city in the Netherlands, when he was shot outside his home.

AIVD, the Dutch security service, concluded that Samadi’s murder was one of two political assassinations that Iran had carried out on Dutch soil. The killings, and similar investigations that revealed Tehran’s involvement in a planned bomb attack in Paris and a thwarted assassination in Denmark, triggered the imposition of EU sanctions in 2019.

Security services in Europe began researching Iran’s use of criminal gangs to target dissidents.

Ulysse Ellian, a Dutch politician of Iranian descent, believes Fassih was “used” by more powerful forces.

“Fassih was found guilty of ordering the murder but his trial heard he didn’t even know the identity of the victim. Iran had asked the Kinahans to have this guy in the Netherlands killed and they instructed Fassih to do it. Fassih then hired the shooters,” he said.

“But the murder was a political act. It terrified Iranian dissidents across Europe. The regime showed it would liaise with criminals to kill its enemies. If you help Iran to murder its enemies in Europe you are much more than a criminal gang, you are a threat to European security.”

The full extent of the Kinahans’ relationship with Tehran and Hezbollah soon became apparent. Investigations into the cartel’s vast wealth discovered it had used Hezbollah’s hawala underground banking system — an informal way of transferring money between countries without moving cash. It involves handing cash to a person in one country and then a colleague or hawaladar dispensing the same sum elsewhere.

The system has existed for hundreds of years in the Middle East but Hezbollah and the cartel modernised it by introducing encrypted codes for extra security.

European and US intelligence believe the cartel has used the payment system to make payments to South American drug cartels among others.

Hezbollah is believed to have generated hundreds of millions of dollars through its arrangement with the Kinahans by charging a commission for each transaction, which it has in turn used to finance terrorism in Lebanon and Syria.

Planes-for-Iran mission

This is only one strand of the mutually beneficial relationship. Christy Kinahan has been implicated in attempts to buy second-hand aircraft and spare parts in Africa and central America for Iran’s armed forces using an assortment of false identities and offshore companies.

He was linked to attempts to buy a small fleet of aircraft from the Egyptian military in 2019 on behalf of a charity based in Singapore on the pretext that it would offer air ambulance services in central Africa. Kinahan had used an abbreviation of his name to attend aviation conferences and attempt to assume control of Nyasa Air Charters, a tiny airline in Malawi, and Crescents and Crosses, a Singapore charity purporting to offer logistical services to aid agencies in Africa.

The security services believe Kinahan was attempting to source the aircraft for Iranian agents, or possibly sublease them to Iranian airlines. He used the name Christopher Vincent to create a new identity on LinkedIn to organise the deals. “Kinahan now operates as a contractor for Iran. He is no longer an ordinary criminal,” said an intelligence source.
US takes action

Ireland’s police force was the first to uncover the cartel’s connections to Hezbollah and Iran, possibly through its own intelligence collecting. It freely admits to using this to encourage Washington to impose the sweeping sanctions it announced last year, prohibiting financial institutions and businesses conducting financial transactions with the Kinahans, their associates and companies they control.

Until 2020, the US had not given serious consideration to pursuing a criminal gang led by a former taxi driver from Dublin. After the US and British security services received the intelligence, Washington moved with speed. The US may extradite members of the gang to face murder, drug trafficking charges and terrorist financing charges, if they can be found.
Iran’s criminal proxies

Iran’s intelligence services — the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its overseas operations Quds force — have for decades used criminals and Hezbollah to circumvent sanctions and organise political violence on its behalf, according to Ivan Sascha Sheehan, an Iran policy expert at the College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore.

“Hezbollah was created and is trained, financed, and armed by the IRGC. In many countries where the Iranian regime cannot carry out operations directly, Lebanese Hezbollah is responsible for surveillance and spearheads operations,” said Sheehan.

In return, criminal groups receive reciprocal benefits from Iran’s security services in support of their own agendas, said Lincoln Bloomfield, a retired US diplomat and former national security adviser. Money, protection and access to drug shipments from producer countries are among the benefits.

“This is a ruthless regime that observes no constraints in seeking to hold on to power. This regime has staged assassinations and attempted assassinations in many countries including France, Switzerland, Germany, Turkey, Italy and Japan among others,” added Bloomfield.

But the Kinahan cartel’s silent transition into a narco-terrorist group may ultimately be its downfall because it has pushed Washington into pursuing an aggressive policy against them. The US has used its diplomatic leverage to force the United Arab Emirates, where the Kinahan family once lived, to freeze their assets. Many of the cartel’s associates have been arrested and extradited to face charges.

But Kinahan and his cartel is a criminal organisation like no other and has shown itself to be highly durable. His whereabouts and those of his sons and their associates are unknown. They fled their luxurious homes in Dubai when the US sanctions were announced and vanished without trace. Christy Kinahan may have reached Asia but Daniel and Christopher Jr are believed to be moving between the UAE, Qatar and possibly Jordan. Daniel Kinahan has been frozen out by boxers he used to promote, including Tyson Fury, whom he has been pictured with.

Many, including O’Driscoll, believe it will use the alliances it has forged with Iran and Hezbollah to ensure their escape and survival. “I think the world has now woken up to how dangerous groups like this can become,” he said.

From its beginnings on the streets of Dublin, it has learned to evade law enforcement, annihilate its rivals and expand its influence around the globe. These skills have shaped its way of thinking about crime, its capacity for projecting power and its ability to survive.

Source: thetimes