Mob boss Daniel Kinahan has fled his Dubai bolthole and is frantically trying to find a safe haven in Asia, it has emerged.
The Irish Mirror has confirmed that investigators believe the 45-year-old escaped using a false passport around the time the international crackdown on his €1billion drugs cartel was announced in April. And it’s understood they believe the godfather of Irish crime is now desperate to find a safe zone in another country, away from American cops who are part of the massive takedown of his drugs empire.
Sources have told the Irish Mirror investigators suspect his final destination will be another state in Asia. They said one possibility was a central Asian nation like Kazakhstan.
Read more: Kinahan cartel flew millions of cocaine into Ireland on private plane
Kinahan has made several visits to the oil-rich state that borders Europe and already has firm contacts there. In 2019, he was videoed paying a massive $140,000 for a ball used in a Champions League final during a charity auction in the country with boxing promoter Bob Arum.
One source said: “He could be trying to get to Kazakhstan. But he could also be trying to get to the Far East, somewhere like Myanmar or Thailand. Either way, he is finished in Dubai and has gone.”
It’s understood Daniel’s father Christy, 64, and his brother Christopher Jnr, 41 have also fled Dubai, following April’s crackdown. All three were named as international criminals by the US Department of the Treasury, which placed financial sanctions on them.
Their US-linked assets were frozen and they were barred from flying on American airlines – and companies from there were also barred from doing business with them anywhere in the world. A few weeks after that move, authorities in Dubai, where the trio have based themselves since the Kinahan Hutch war erupted in the streets in Dublin in early 2016, announced identical sanctions on them.
All their known assets were frozen and they now have no access to them – which means they can’t even go shopping in the cash-rich state. And as well as those measures, the Americans also slapped a bounty of $5million on each of their heads – which will be paid to anyone who betrays them to authorities.
Gardai want to charge Daniel Kinahan with serious offences here and he is also to be questioned over the September 2015 murder of Gary Hutch in Spain – a killing the sparked the boldly war that has now left 18 men dead. But as well as that, it’s understood American authorities also want to charge all three in the US courts with drugs offences.
That, sources said, would see the Kinahans suffer the same fate as Mexican drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman – currently serving life plus 30 years in a supermax federal high security prison after a trial in 2019. It was held there even though his crimes were committed in his native Mexico and sources said the same fate awaited the Kinahan gangsters.
The Irish Mirror has also learned the international crackdown on the Kinahans has seen their cartel implode under the strain of being at the centre of a massive policing operation. Sources say investigators believe the cartel, which smuggles millions of euro for drugs into Ireland and Britain every year as well as providing money laundering facilities for other gangs, is set to break up.
A source said last night: “The focus on the Kinahans means they cannot run the operation. Others will step in to take over. We judge it is more likely that it will fracture and his associates will pick up the pieces rather than one of them being crowned Daniel’s successor. But it could take several months for this all to play out.”
The cartel has suffered massive losses of men, cash and drugs in a major Garda crackdown since the feud erupted in 2016, More than 70 Kinahan gangsters have been locked up in Ireland, Britain and Spain. And investigators have seized more than 30 of the gang’s firearms – as well as tens of millions worth of their drugs and hard cash.
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