Why these Irish cartel bosses are still free

0:01 [Sam] A few weeks ago, I got a message from researchers at Bellingcat.

0:05 They use images, maps, social media,

0:07 anything public to expose crimes, espionage, and abuses of power.

0:11 So when I saw their message, I clicked right away.

0:15 It contained a video of a mixed martial arts event from last June in Dubai.

0:20 It showed two typical MMA fighters,

0:23 but what Bellingcat wanted me to see was behind them, in the crowd.

0:27 This guy.

0:29 He's hard to make out,

0:30 but Bellingcat found him in this photo from the same event.

0:33 It's Daniel Kinahan, one of the most wanted criminals in the world.

0:39 And this is his father, Christy, also wanted.

0:43 These are the first images of them seen in years.

0:47 The Kinahan lead a criminal organization unlike any other.

0:50 They've trafficked huge amounts of drugs, laundered billions of dollars,

0:53 and partnered with cartels, terrorists, and foreign intelligence services.

0:58 The Kinahans were linked to murders while building an empire in pro boxing.

1:03 Then they vanished.

1:05 The US government has declared war on the Kinahan organized crime group.

1:09 They have imposed a $5 million bounty,

1:12 ended up on a list of sanctions alongside Russian oligarchs,

1:16 terror groups, and foreign regimes.

1:17 Justice will not stop in searching to bring these people before the courts.

1:22 Many assume the Kinahan were on the run

1:24 or in hiding that their organization had been weakened.

1:27 But these images tell a very different story.

1:30 When combined with evidence collected by Bellingcat and reporter John Mooney,

1:34 they suggest that Kinahans and their criminal

1:37 organization may actually be stronger than ever.

1:41 I have come to regard them as something of a hydra.

1:45 If you decapitate one of those heads, this creature grows a new one.

1:51 This is brand new information.

1:54 So I talked to the experts and designed a video to tell you what is the most

1:59 incredible crime story I've ever covered and help

2:02 you understand what these new images really tell us.

2:06 So what makes the Kinahan organization so unique?

2:10 How did they rise to the top of pro boxing?

2:13 What are they doing out in public now and will anyone ever catch them?

2:19 (upbeat music) It all started with Christy Kinahan.

2:35 He grew up middle class in Ireland.

2:38 By his twenties, he was driving a taxi and racking up a criminal record.

2:42 He was arrested for possessing heroin,

2:44 for selling weapons, and for forging checks.

2:46 Police considered him an ordinary criminal, but...

2:50 He's not your ordinary criminal.

2:52 [Sam] John Mooney's been investigating the Kinahan for over a decade.

2:55 He's a highly intelligent individual.

2:58 He speaks several languages, very good at making people trust him,

3:02 and he was also someone that was willing to take risks and network.

3:09 [Sam] Around 2001, Christy was one of the earliest to sense

3:12 an opportunity in Columbia where cartels produced most of the world's cocaine.

3:18 Powerful Mexican cartels were taking over their supply routes

3:21 to the US leaving the Colombians in search of new customers.

3:25 At the time, Europeans didn't use much cocaine, but with the Cold War over,

3:30 they were making more money, maybe enough to give it a try.

3:35 As the Colombians looked for a way into Europe, Christy Kinahan stepped in.

3:40 He started buying cocaine from the Colombians, shipping it across the Atlantic,

3:44 marking up the price, then selling it to gangs to distribute.

3:50 Between 1998 and 2008, the European cocaine market more than doubled

3:54 to $34 billion almost equal to the US market.

3:59 It made Christy's organization a ton of money, but it was dirty money.

4:03 So Christy opened legit company like car dealerships and tanning salons

4:07 to launder his money through and other criminals money for a fee.

4:12 Christy built a new kind of criminal organization where

4:15 one part sold drugs while the other washed the money.

4:18 By 2006, it was among the biggest in Europe,

4:21 and Christy was worth over $500 million.

4:25 He moved to Spain with his sons and put

4:27 Daniel in charge of the drugs and Kristopher Jr.

4:29 in charge of the money laundering.

4:31 This trio used violence carefully.

4:35 They understood that if you engage in street level violence,

4:39 you'll inevitably attract unwanted attention to yourself.

4:43 So part of their modus operandi was actually just

4:46 to sell drugs and keep away from everything else.

4:50 [Sam] But they did order the murder of several Irish gang

4:52 members and when an Irish criminal was killed in Spain in 2008,

4:56 the police started looking into the Kinahans.

4:58 (police shouting)- [Sam] In 2010,

5:03 police seized properties for his bank accounts and arrested all three Kinahans.

5:06 They sent Christy to jail but didn't have enough evidence to charge his sons.

5:10 It was Daniel's turn to add another head to the Hydra.

5:14 Instead of competing against other criminal groups,

5:17 he convinced a few to collaborate.

5:19 They began partnering up to buy drug loads,

5:21 which allowed them to place larger orders at a lower cost per ton.

5:25 Then they chose between their respective routes.

5:28 If police seized load, they share the risk.

5:30 If not, they shared the reward.

5:33 This group soon trafficked a third

5:35 of Europe's cocaine plus other drugs and weapons.

5:38 It became known as the super cartel,

5:42 but it was just one head of the Kinahan Hydra.

5:46 It wasn't an organization that was cohesive or loyal to each other.

5:51 Christopher Kinahan and the organization he

5:54 leads were involved in multiple other

5:57 types of criminal activity that these other

6:00 members had no involvement in whatsoever.

6:03 [Sam] In 2016, the Kinahans moved to Dubai closer

6:05 to an organization they laundered money with called Hezbollah.

6:13 A powerful Lebanese militia that also smuggles drugs and weapons.

6:16 Hezbollah connected the Kinahans to their backers, Iran.

6:20 Police believe the Kinahans murdered an Iranian dissident as a favor

6:24 and tried to buy aircraft for Iran's armed services.

6:27 The Kinahan organization's connections to these state actors

6:30 combined with the scale of their other operations,

6:32 put it in a league of its own.

6:35 They exist in that netter world between political power,

6:39 organized crime, and hostile states and terrorism.

6:42 There are very few criminal organizations like that in the world,

6:46 and there are even fewer that are

6:49 successful and have managed to evade detection.

6:53 It is hard for me to overstate just how successful the Kinahan really were.

6:58 By 2020, they were worth a billion dollars,

7:02 but one small part of their organization wasn't designed to make money.

7:06 It was designed to make a reputation.

7:08 Daniel Kinahan is very different from his dad.

7:11 I think that he believed that he could sports wash himself.

7:16 (crowd cheering)- Making an episode of Search

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8:44 And now I'll take you back to the story.

8:49 For this part of the story, I needed to talk to a boxing expert.

8:52 So I called journalist Kieran Cunningham,-

8:55 Like it's an excuse that's often thrown

8:56 at me when I've covered this story over the years that people say,

8:59 you know, boxing has always been corrupt.

9:03 [Sam] That's because it's very easy for anyone,

9:05 including criminals to get involved in boxing.

9:08 It's unusual in the world of sport

9:10 and that there's no overriding governing body.

9:13 What people think of as a governing body,

9:15 the alphabet soup of IBF and WBA and WBC, et cetera.

9:19 Basically they hand out belts.

9:22 They don't really control this sport.

9:25 Instead, an informal network of people control boxing.

9:28 It includes boxers and their trainers,

9:30 plus managers who represent them and promoters who match them with opponents.

9:34 They all need licenses,

9:36 but anyone can call themselves an advisor like Daniel Kinahan.

9:41 In 2012, he co-founded a boxing gym and recruited a few fighters.

9:45 It looked like a passion project.

9:47 I'm told Daniel really had a talent for it.

9:50 There are plenty people in boxing who still speak highly of Daniel Kinahan.

9:53 He is a genuine love for the sport and for boxers.

9:58 [Sam] But Daniel soon began spending millions

10:00 of dollars to sign more than 300 boxers,

10:03 plus trainers, managers, and a few MMA fighters.

10:06 What Daniel named MTK Global soon became the biggest thing in boxing.

10:12 It was looking to expand constantly.

10:13 They paid boxers well and on time,

10:15 which is unusual within the sport, but from what we've been told,

10:19 it had that financial clout because it was

10:22 being used to launder a lot of drugs money.

10:26 [Sam] MTK Global's best fighter was a six

10:28 foot nine Englishman with a deadly right hook.

10:31 [Announcer] Honestly, how much more can he take?

10:34 He's down and it's over.

10:37 Tyson Fury.

10:39 [Sam] Tyson Fury won the world heavyweight title in 2015,

10:42 then got addicted to drugs and retired.

10:45 In 2017, Fury started training at MTK Global's gyms

10:49 wearing its merch and letting Daniel manage his comeback.

10:53 In 2020, Fury posted this video.

10:56 Hello there.

10:56 I'm just after getting off the phone with Daniel Kinahan,

10:59 he's just informed me that the biggest fight

11:03 in British boxing history has just been agreed.

11:06 Get up there, my boy.

11:09 It would come back to haunt the Kinahans

11:11 because it launched Daniel further into the spotlight.

11:14 In 2020, he negotiated two fights for Fury against the reigning world champion.

11:20 Fury reclaimed the world title and defended it.

11:25 Boxing promoter top rank reportedly paid Daniel millions

11:28 of dollars even though he was just an advisor.

11:31 By 2021, Daniel was one of the most powerful people in boxing.

11:37 What's remarkable is that Daniel's criminal business didn't

11:40 disqualify him even after it spilled into boxing.

11:45 In 2014, a rival Irish gang shot a boxer

11:47 near an MTK Global gym mistaken him for Daniel.

11:51 They tried again at a weigh-in event in Ireland.

11:54 They missed Daniel but murdered his friend.

11:57 The Kinahans retaliated with a wave of violence that left 18 people dead.

12:02 This was a huge story while Daniel rose through the ranks of pro boxing.

12:06 Often be that they kind of had a culture of America,

12:09 both within boxing in itself and within

12:11 the boxing media that you don't rock the boat.

12:13 It was quite a lonely road to ask questions about Diana Kinahan for a few years.

12:21 But Daniel's rise in boxing did attract more

12:23 police attention to the Kinahans and around 2017,

12:26 French police put malware on cell phones made by a company called EncroChat.

12:31 It let them read messages from many

12:33 criminal groups leading them to the super cartel, and eventually the Kinahans.

12:38 European police have busted what they're calling a super cartel.

12:41 [Reporter] Arrest took place in the middle of the night.

12:44 [Reporter 2] Euro police described some of those detained as high value targets.

12:48 In 2019, police captured a Dutch member of the super cartel.

12:52 Then in 2021, the Italian and Bosnian members, then the Albanian.

12:58 It spelled the end of the super cartel.

13:00 The Kinahans remained free in Dubai but not unscathed.

13:03 In 2022, the US government announced $5 million bounties and sanctioned

13:08 three Kinahan companies dealing a major blow to the organization.

13:12 MTK Global folded and the Kinahans went into hiding.

13:17 For the next few years,

13:18 journalists wrote that the noose was tightening around the Kinahans.

13:21 Many proclaimed their downfall and that's the story that these new images turn

13:26 completely upside down and they reveal a lot more than you might think.

13:30 I don't think their organization is bigger than it was in 2022.

13:34 I know it is.

13:36 What's amazing is that we probably wouldn't have these images

13:39 unless Bellingcat hadn't first found Christy Kinahan's restaurant reviews.

13:47 There was reports that Christy Kinahan was using this alias,

13:51 Christopher Vincent online.

13:53 [Sam] Connor Plunkett is a Bellingcat investigator.

13:55 So I started running some searches using that alias.

13:57 I came across this Google review profile under the name Christopher Vincent,

14:01 and it had over 200 reviews going back four years and loads of pictures.

14:08 [Sam] These were genuine.

14:10 Christy gave a Budapest Hotel,

14:11 four stars for stunning decor and a particularly excellent staff member.

14:16 He added a picture to another, showing his reflection in a window.

14:20 An odd mistake for a seasoned criminal.

14:23 I think he just didn't see the harm in it,

14:24 but it was just kind of shocking to see

14:27 the amount of information he was putting out there.

14:31 [Sam\ That's because Christy's reviews revealed places he traveled.

14:34 None outside the UAE were after 2022,

14:37 but Bellingcat could still use them to identify people

14:39 he may have worked with and maybe still does.

14:44 Take Oliver Herman, a businessman and winner of the 2016 Munich Marathon.

14:48 He was arrested with 200 kilograms of cocaine in Australia just over a year ago.

14:53 John Mooney reported that Herman has ties

14:55 to Christy and Bellingcat found out more about him.

14:58 Like many serious runners, Herman logged runs on Strava,

15:01 thus creating a record of places he traveled.

15:05 Bellingcat found he was often in places at the same time as Christy Kinahan.

15:09 In 2019, Herman logged a run very close to the Amanzi Lodge Hotel,

15:14 which Christy wrote in a review that he visited the next day.

15:17 Bellingcat believes this might even be Christy there that day.

15:22 Herman's next run was three days later in Dublin, Ireland.

15:26 In 2021, Herman ran to and from a Dubai hotel.

15:29 Three days later, this photo was posted of Daniel Kinahan at the same hotel.

15:34 All of this suggests that Herman worked

15:36 with the Kinahans before they were sanctioned in 2022,

15:39 and his recent arrest suggests he continued to afterwards.

15:44 Herman led Bellingcat to find Timothy James Clark,

15:47 an Australian pilot who lived large.

15:50 Just last September,

15:51 Clark died in a plane crash in Brazil with 200 kilos of cocaine.

15:55 Police said the plane was modified for transatlantic flights.

16:00 Bellingcat found that Clark was one of eight

16:01 X followers of a businessman named Adam Wood,

16:04 who was a known associate of Christy Kinahan.

16:09 Herman and Clark are clues that suggest

16:11 that Kinahan are still trafficking drugs,

16:13 at least between South America, Europe, and Australia.

16:17 Meanwhile, John reports that the Kinahan took

16:19 back control of the drug trade in Ireland,

16:21 that the Kinahan owned a tanker that was used to illegally ship oil to Russia

16:26 and that they continue to create companies

16:28 for money laundering all over the world.

16:30 You could take it globe,

16:32 you can give it a spin and let your finger pick out somewhere,

16:36 and I'm pretty sure they've some operation in it.

16:41 Meanwhile, Connor hunted for signs of the Kinahan themselves.

16:45 He found this photo of Christopher Jr and probably

16:47 Christy in a cafe in Dubai in 2023.

16:50 Then Connor used facial recognition software to look

16:53 for Daniel and this January he found him.

16:58 The man seen next to him leads to even more information.

17:02 Mounir Lazzez is a former MMA fighter who once competed in the UFC.

17:06 He was represented by MTK Global and was close to Daniel Kinahan.

17:11 Here he is just four days after the US sanctioned the Kinahans.

17:14 I would love to thank my coaches and my brother Daniel Kinahan.

17:17 Without him, I would never be the man who I am today.

17:20 That man is a friend and advisor.

17:22 He picked me up when the life had kicked me down.

17:24 [Reporter] Are you aware that Daniel Kinahan this week was sanctioned by the US

17:28 government because he quote sources large

17:31 quantities of cocaine from South America?

17:34 No, I don't know that.

17:37 [Sam] Until recently, Lazzez is listed as a part owner

17:39 of a gym called 971 MMA Fitness Academy in Dubai.

17:43 And as Bellingcat found a few dodger companies as well.

17:47 A database created by the nonprofit C4 ADS showed Lazzez ran two other

17:52 companies that paid more than $80 million to purchase two oil tankers in 2023.

17:57 The next year, the US sanctioned this one for loading products belonging

18:00 to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary guard on behalf

18:04 of a company affiliated with Hezbollah.

18:07 And this one were carrying Iranian oil.

18:11 It links Hezbollah and Iran to a company owned

18:13 by a man who's very close to the Kinahans.

18:17 More evidence suggesting that the Kinahan organization

18:20 is still growing and the founders are thriving.

18:23 They probably now accumulated well to about 2 billion.

18:27 Like that's not too bad for a taxi driver from Dublin and his two sons.

18:32 And I couldn't help notice that the Kinahans are still linked to combat sports.

18:37 Would you be surprised to learn that perhaps Daniel's involved in MMA now.

18:42 If anyone thinks for a moment that they're not involved in those sports still,

18:47 well, I think they need psychiatric care.

18:54 Ultimately, the most important thing

18:55 that these photos reveal is the Kinahan mindset.

18:59 They're in the front row of a public event in Dubai.

19:02 There are cameras everywhere and they don't seem to care,

19:07 meaning the Kinahans feel safe.

19:09 The UAE government says it hasn't extradited them

19:11 because there isn't a warrant out for their arrest.

19:14 That's true, but is that the only reason?

19:18 From the Emiratis position,

19:20 the Kinahans represent a business opportunity to them.

19:24 They are billionaire criminals, businessmen, friends of states,

19:29 they have contacts everywhere and they're quite willing

19:32 to look after those who are looking after them.

19:36 And that is the true value of what the Kinahan built.

19:40 An organization that does everything,

19:42 makes them useful to anyone, criminals, businessmen, foreign governments,

19:48 the Kinahans hints can act freely because they know that someone

19:51 somewhere wants them free and that's what makes it very,

19:55 very hard to ever bring them to justice.

19:58 They've many things against them, but they've many things going for them.

20:03 I think it's completely conceivable that I could be here in 10

20:08 years still writing stories and investigating the activities of this cartel.

20:17 All right, thanks so much for watching.

20:18 If you haven't subscribed yet to Search Party now's your chance to.

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