Detention will disrupt flow of drugs into State, gardaí believe

Irish criminals on the Costa del Sol who knew anything about Kinahan’s operation will all now be under suspicion as possible informers

SUCH WAS the influence of Christy Kinahan on the illicit drugs trade in Ireland that senior gardaí believe his detention in Spain will disrupt the flow of drugs into the Republic like no other arrest has over the past decade.

The impact is likely to be first seen in the reduced availability of drugs on Irish streets. The price of drugs will also increase due to the reduced supply.

But the Kinahan arrest and the apparent fall of his gang will not be limited to the Irish street corners were his drugs were sold.

There is now likely to be an intense power struggle to fill the void his arrest has left. Unless a consensus can be agreed between the shrewder Irish operators in European bases, the struggle to replace Kinahan may result in blood letting.

There is also the serious matter of where the gardaí, Spanish police and the British authorities got the initial intelligence that enabled them to crack Kinahan’s network.

The gang leader’s associates in Spain, Ireland and the UK will all being trying to identify the informers and hoping the finger of suspicion doesn’t fall of them. The safety of any criminal suspected of informing on Ireland’s biggest drug gang would be seriously compromised.

It appears the bulk of the initial intelligence came from a €10.5 million seizure of cannabis in Clongorey, Co Kildare, in February 2008.

That means the postmortem into how it all went wrong for Kinahan will likely have its focus in Ireland.

However, Irish criminals on the Costa del Sol who knew anything about Kinahan’s operation will all now be under suspicion as possible informers.

Many drug gangs here and in Britain owe Kinahan’s gang huge sums of money for the drugs they bought from him and may now feel with the gang boss behind bars, they no longer have to pay up.

The remnants of Kinahan’s gang will undoubtedly have other ideas, which may bring them into potentially serious conflict with some of the most dangerous Irish and British drug and gun gangs.

Kinahan also specialised in laundering other major drug dealers’ money and investing it for them in property, for a fee. The fact that hundreds of millions of property linked to Kinahan – mainly in Spain and Brazil – has been identified and frozen means a large number of Irish and British gangs are now seriously out of pocket. This may well result in serious violence from those players as they attempt to recoup their losses from Kinahan’s network.

Kinahan has been based on the Costa del Sol since late 2001, when he was released from a prison term in Ireland for handling stolen travellers’ cheques. He immediately established contacts with major international drug cartels in Spain, sourcing vast quantities of mostly cocaine and cannabis from them.

The drugs were then shipped to Ireland hidden in trucks, owned by “front” food export companies controlled by Kinahan, that travelled from the continent to Ireland and the UK by car ferry. The drugs were then sold on to local gangs.

The operation came crashing down last Tuesday when 700 police officers in Ireland, Spain and the UK arrested 32 suspects during co-ordinated raids. Property, valued at at least €650 million, has now been identified in Brazil, Spain, the UK, Dubai, South Africa, Belgium, Ireland and the UK.

The properties in Brazil include six significant leisure complexes valued at €500 million.

Some 60 properties linked to the Kinahan gang have already been frozen in Spain. Gardaí believe Kinahan controlled a network of 30 front companies through which he transported and distributed drugs across Ireland and the UK and then laundered the proceeds by buying property.