The head of the Garda unit at the vanguard of the fight against organised crime gangs has warned Kinahan cartel leaders there’s no ‘safe haven’ where they can escape justice.
It comes as the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal that gardaí and incoming Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly are set to roll out a new intelligence strategy to target the Kinahans and more than 20 other ‘transnational’ gangs operating here.
Senior sources this weekend said Mr Kelly, who takes over the top Garda job from outgoing commissioner Drew Harris on September 1, has made bringing down the Kinahan cartel and other major players in the drugs trade a priority as part of a ‘back to basics’ approach to policing.
In an interview with the MoS, Detective Chief Superintendent Séamus Boland, the head of the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (GDOCB), said the Kinahans no longer have the same stranglehold on the drugs trade that they previously enjoyed.
But he warned that other major players are emerging – and that keeping these gangs from becoming a major threat is a top priority.
Supt Boland said: ‘The Kinahan crime gang is well-documented for the position that they held in relation to organised crime in Ireland… that group has been the primary threat for a number of decades.
They do not hold the same control on organised crime in Ireland as they did pre-2016, that’s for definite. They still do exist, and as a criminal organisation have not been totally destroyed at this stage.
But their level of activity and involvement at the higher end in Ireland has decreased dramatically.
‘A lot of what they would be involved in would be in other jurisdictions in relation to cocaine trafficking, more so than here. And probably because their main operators here in Ireland have been to a good extent brought to justice.’
Gardaí in Ireland, and through helping police in other jurisdictions, have enjoyed notable successes in the war against the Kinahan crime group in recent years.
In May, alleged senior gang member Seán McGovern was extradited from Dubai to Ireland, in a major blow to the cartel. Gardaí estimate 81 members of the gang have now been convicted and jailed, more than 50 lives have been saved, and millions of euro worth of drugs seized.
However, bringing cartel leader Daniel Kinahan back to face justice in Ireland remains a top priority.
Mr Boland remains optimistic the Kinahans – still one of the biggest drug cartels in Europe – will eventually be dismantled. And in a warning to the gang leaders, he said: ‘I have no concerns about any Irish criminal moving from one country to another to try and avert extradition back to Ireland. It’s been well proven it doesn’t matter to us what country they go.
‘We’ve seen it in the Middle East which commentators described as a safe haven. We’ve seen the same from South America. It doesn’t concern me in the slightest what country people move to – we will engage with those countries and whatever the requirements are, we will pursue that to the end.’
But at home, new threats are emerging from the shadows, in particular one gang – known as ‘The Family’ – who have overtaken the Kinahans as the biggest drug dealers now operating in the State.
The gang has grown from being a Dublin-based gang in 2017 to a major criminal organisation with links to south American drug cartels bringing in tens of millions of euros a year.
The source added The Family has managed to stay relatively ‘under the radar because they have not got involved in gun crime or shootings. That brings political, media and policing attention. They are as bad and as vicious as the Kinahans, but lessons have been learned that, if you start gangland stuff involving feuds and shootings, it causes public outrage, a media frenzy, a political focus. It is bad for business.’
Mr Boland said taking down this group has become ‘a national priority’, adding: ‘We are pursuing them with the same methodology that we did in relation to the likes of the Kinahans. We remain positive we will bring significant prosecutions before the courts.’
In an indication of the scale of the drugs market in Ireland, he said gardaí have identified 22 ‘transnational’ gangs operating across the country who have links to criminal networks in other jurisdictions.
Mr Boland said many of these criminal organisations ‘operate on networks who work with each other at any given time.
‘We have in the region of 22 full-time, long-term investigations, and every one of those groups will have an international nexus. So our investigations are linked in with international colleagues.
Some of them at the higher end we can see links between some of the groups and associates of the Kinahans or international groups who would work with the Kinahans, so there is still that type of connection.’
A key part of the Garda strategy under the incoming Commissioner will be to prevent these gangs from growing and posing the same threat as the Kinahan organisation, who are responsible for the vast majority of 18 deaths – some of them completely innocent people – as a result of the cartel’s murderous feud with the Hutch gang.
Senior Garda sources this weekend said Mr Kelly was ‘key’ to piloting an intelligence tool to ‘stop’ Irish gangs from becoming major international drug players like the Kinahans.
The Organised Crime Threat Assessment (OCTA) tool – described by one source as ‘a system of determining and mapping out crime gangs in Ireland and their international links’ – was first piloted in the Eastern region three years ago.
Over the last year it has also been rolled out across the Southern region, and senior gardaí are hopeful it will be expanded nationally under Mr Kelly’s watch.
One source said the current Deputy Commissioner with responsibility for the security of the State has ‘championed’ the new intelligence strategy.
And they signalled the war on drugs and organised crime will be a ‘top priority’ for the new Commissioner. Mr Kelly was appointed as head of the Organised and Serious Crime (OSC) unit in May 2022, taking over from the late John O’Driscoll.
He built on his predecessor’s work in developing an international coalition — including the US, UK, Spain and later the UAE — to target the Kinahan cartel. This, in turn, would play a significant role in the arrest of Kinahan’s alleged right hand man Sean McGovern.
A source told the MoS: ‘His [Kelly’s] focus was on international cartels, in particular Mexican cartels, because there was a lot of Mexican cartel money flowing through Ireland.
‘The Americans had a big interest in them because China is sending the fentanyl and the raw materials to the Mexican cartels to flood America. His focus was transnational crime, organised crime, serious crime.
‘Justin helped build relations with the Americans [in relation to the Kinahans]. That was a game changer. The treasury sanctions and UAE coming on board were a game changer with the Kinahans.’
The biggest success of recent operations against the Kinahan gang has, according to Supt Boland, has been the dramatic drop in gangland murders.
So far this year, there has not been a single gangland related killing. Supt Boland said: ‘There was one year we had 33 gangland murders… so we do hold this very unique position, but I am absolutely a realist. This is going to be a challenge going forward as well for us to try and maintain that.
‘Gangland murders will occur and there are younger people out there involved in crime who aren’t strategic, who are hot-headed, and we have seen some of the most recent shootings and murders in recent years, there is no real planning put into them.
‘They’re more disorganised crime, as opposed to organised with just thugs really. Our number one priority is the preservation of life. We have developed expertise in relation to threat to life operations. Thankfully, we are not having to engage in it as much as we did in 2016, 2017, 2018…’
Supt Boland, who describes himself as ‘forever the optimist’, said he is looking ‘forward with positivity’ to working under the new Commissioner, adding: ‘He understands our end of the business very well.’