Gardaí seized €1.36 million and arrested seven people this year as part of an international investigation into billion-dollar networks that launder money for the Kinahans and other crime gangs.
The Garda has been working with Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and other international partners as part of Operation Destabilise into Russian money-laundering networks supporting serious and organised crime around the world.
The investigation found two networks laundered money for the Kinahan crime cartel and for state-controlled TV network Russia Today. It also found one Russian network which is active in the UK bought a bank to facilitate payments to support Russian military efforts in Ukraine.
The Garda has made a number of arrests in Ireland this year as part of the crackdown.
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On April 9th, members of the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (GNDOCB), along with officers of the Revenue customs service, seized €342,000 in cash, and arrested a man and a woman in their 60s at Dublin Airport.
On April 23rd, gardaí intercepted a vehicle, seized €638,000 in cash and arrested one man in his 30s in west Dublin.
On October 14th, gardaí conducted searches of four residential premises in north Dublin and Co Leitrim, seized €383,000 in cash and arrested two men and two women, all aged in their 30s.
All seven arrested people remain before the courts in Ireland.
Garda assistant commissioner Angela Willis, of the organised and serious crime unit, said the force “continues to work closely and effectively with national and international partners including the National Crime Agency in the UK.”
She said the Garda would continue “to disrupt, degrade and dismantle transnational criminal organisations and their criminal activity which impacts not just on communities in Ireland but across the UK and Europe”.
In an update to Operation Destabilise, the NCA said it was highlighting the scale of networks it was disrupting that convert cash from street crime into cryptocurrency and tie the local drugs trade to organised and state-sponsored crime.
It said that since the launch of Operation Destabilise, 128 arrests have been made, with more than £25 million (€29 million) seized in cash and cryptocurrency in the UK alone.
A spokesperson for the NCA said a thread can be drawn between a person “buying some cocaine on a Friday night” to “geopolitical events that are causing suffering across the world”.
Sal Melki, deputy director for economic crime at the NCA, added: “Today we can reveal the sheer scale at which these networks operate and draw a line between crimes in our communities, sophisticated organised criminals and state-sponsored activity.
“The networks disrupted through Destabilise operate at all levels of international money laundering, from collecting the street cash from drug deals, through to purchasing banks and enabling global sanctions breaches.”
In December last year, the agency exposed two networks, TGR and Smart, which were working together to launder money for transnational crime groups involved in cyber crime, drugs and firearms smuggling.
[ Senior gardaí warn Kinahan cartel members of ‘serious life choices’ aheadOpens in new window ]
The networks were known to help their Russian clients “illegally bypass” financial restrictions to invest money in the UK, according to the NCA.
Smart is headed by 39-year-old Ekaterina Zhdanova, a Russian national said to have been born in Siberia before making it in the financial industry and building up connections in Moscow.
Georgy Rossi was the boss of TGR.
It is understood that TGR and Smart laundered for the Kinahans.
Senior members of the networks were sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control in December. Zhdanova is being held in pretrial detention in France.
In August, the UK government sanctioned a company called Altair Holding SA, which is linked to Rossi, as part of a wider crackdown on Russia’s attempts to exploit Kyrgyz financial systems and crypto networks.
The NCA said that, on Christmas Day 2024, Altair purchased a 75 per cent stake of Keremet bank, which was subsequently sanctioned by the UK and US.
Keremet was identified as facilitating cross-border payments on behalf of Russian state-owned bank Promsvyazbank, which supported companies involved in the Russian military industry.
Mr Melki told a media briefing: “The people that have been responsible for purchasing that bank, and facilitating those payments that are supporting the Russian industrial military base, are operating in at least 28 cities and towns in the UK.”
Mr Melki said the UK-based launderers connected to the same network are not just couriers but are instead individuals who are “sustaining an entire architecture that allows crime to pay in our country”.
He added: “For the first time, we are tying drugs trades in our community all the way through to the highest levels of organised crime, geopolitics, sanctions evasion, the Russian industrial military complex, and state-linked activity.
“We could draw a really clear thread between somebody buying some cocaine on a Friday night, all the way through to geopolitical events that are causing suffering across the world.”
