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Speaker 2: Previously on Hot Money, I started looking into a murder
Speaker 2: in a small Dutch town, the murder of a man
Speaker 2: who was living secret life on the run from the
Speaker 2: Iranian regime. And it's taken me to Ireland to a
Speaker 2: safe house owned by the Kinnahans, the family at the
Speaker 2: heart of Europe's most powerful cocaine cartel. But who are
Speaker 2: the Kinnahans and why would drug traffickers be connected to
Speaker 2: what looks like a political assassination. This isn't an easy
Speaker 2: story to report because, for obvious reasons, I can't just
Speaker 2: call up the main characters, crime bosses. They don't usually
Speaker 2: take calls from journalists, so instead I need to find
Speaker 2: the people who are trying to bring them down.
Speaker 3: Heroin took everyone by surprise, took the criminals by surprise.
Speaker 3: It took the on Garda Shircanna. The Irish police Force
Speaker 3: took them by complete surprise.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy seven, Michael O'Sullivan had just joined the
Speaker 2: Irish Police Force. He's in his early twenties and he's
Speaker 2: grown a handle bar mustache and got himself a leather jacket.
Speaker 2: He kind of looks a bit like Charles Bronson, but
Speaker 2: more approachable, a bit friendlier, and as a young detective,
Speaker 2: he soon finds himself on the front line of policing
Speaker 2: a new type of problem because tons of cheap heroin
Speaker 2: is flooding into Europe, including Dublin.
Speaker 3: This was a new ballgame. These were drug dealers on
Speaker 3: the streets, street wise, in what we would call flat complexes,
Speaker 3: in rundown areas where they would have lookouts, and it
Speaker 3: was they're like fortresses and the problem was getting worse
Speaker 3: and worse. It wouldn't be uncommon to have an entire family,
Speaker 3: you know, four or five kids, all on drugs.
Speaker 2: Michael can tell that the usual methods of policing, the
Speaker 2: old ways, they're just not going to work. So he
Speaker 2: comes up with a radical idea.
Speaker 3: I went to my superiors and suggested to them that look,
Speaker 3: people could go in and buy the drugs with a
Speaker 3: view to catching the drug dealer, and basically suggested that
Speaker 3: I could do it. From similar background, I felt I
Speaker 3: could easily blend in.
Speaker 2: What Michael was talking about. Here is an undercover sting,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen eighties Island in the police that's just
Speaker 2: not really the dune thing.
Speaker 3: My boss has told me. It was a crazy idea.
Speaker 3: It was illegal, and if I didn't get myself arrested
Speaker 3: or brought before the courts, i'd bring the police force
Speaker 3: into discredit. It couldn't be done, and it wasn't to
Speaker 3: be done.
Speaker 2: Michael listens to his bosses, weighs up their advice, and
Speaker 2: he ignores it. The way he tells the story of
Speaker 2: this first sting, it sounds just like a scene from
Speaker 2: a movie. He's already chosen a dealer, a dealer he's
Speaker 2: been watching for a while, and one day, when he's
Speaker 2: out on patrol, he decides to split off from his
Speaker 2: colleagues and he goes out alone without telling them where
Speaker 2: he's heading.
Speaker 3: So I went into a flat complex and knocked on
Speaker 3: the door and a guy came out. This big guy
Speaker 3: stood at the door, and as I began to ask
Speaker 3: him for drugs, he produced in his hand and I
Speaker 3: was probably cut by surprise. I didn't really realize. I
Speaker 3: didn't think it would work that fast, So I took
Speaker 3: a deep breath and snatched the drugs from his hand
Speaker 3: and produced my ID card. At the same time, he
Speaker 3: looked at me in disbelief. He thought I was a
Speaker 3: junkie trying to robin.
Speaker 2: It takes a second, but the man notices Michael's police
Speaker 2: idea and then he realizes what's really going on.
Speaker 3: At this stage, he assumed that I'd back up, but
Speaker 3: what he didn't realize was the backup had no idea
Speaker 3: where I was. So he decided to cut his losses
Speaker 3: and he ran back into his flat, and I followed
Speaker 3: him on the way. He cut some drugs that were
Speaker 3: on a table and threw them into a lighting fire.
Speaker 2: Michael knows he needs the drugs as evidence, because that's
Speaker 2: the whole point of the sting, so he stops. The
Speaker 2: heroine is wrapped in this plastic and it's trying to melt.
Speaker 2: Michael reaches his hand into the fire and pulls it out.
Speaker 2: At the same time time the dealer is still desperately
Speaker 2: trying to find a way out of the flat.
Speaker 3: He opened a back window of the ground floor flat,
Speaker 3: and as he was halfway outed, I was holding onto
Speaker 3: his leg.
Speaker 2: So here's Michael, one hand covered in melted plastic, the
Speaker 2: other hand gripping the leg of a heroin dealer who's
Speaker 2: dangling out of a ground floor window, and no one
Speaker 2: knows where he is. He's got back up, but they've
Speaker 2: lost him.
Speaker 3: A passing unit of the police who are trying to
Speaker 3: look for me saw him hanging out the window and
Speaker 3: realized where I was. It came down to that, had
Speaker 3: he not gone out the window, it thinks could have
Speaker 3: gone quite badly. It was a crazy thing to do.
Speaker 3: Looking back in it, I wouldn't advise anyone to do it,
Speaker 3: but you know, you're young and impulsive, and nobody planned
Speaker 3: for it to go that way. I was admonished by
Speaker 3: my bosses and told it was her brain. Don't do
Speaker 3: it again.
Speaker 2: But Michael's risky move pays off. It takes a while,
Speaker 2: but Eventually his bosses realize that he's onto something, and
Speaker 2: soon enough he finds himself coming up against a new
Speaker 2: force in Irish organized crime. It's a family that will
Speaker 2: transform the drugs business, make their fortune and end up
Speaker 2: some of the world's most wanted men. The family at
Speaker 2: the heart of the Dubai Supercartel. I'm Miles Johnson from
Speaker 2: the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. This is Hot Money,
Speaker 2: Season two, The New Narcos, Episode two, Cocaine Ceo. I'm
Speaker 2: trying to understand how a group of European drug traffickers
Speaker 2: became some of the world's most successful criminal entrepreneurs because
Speaker 2: their story is the story of a revolution, a revolution
Speaker 2: that swept across Europe's criminal economy. And Michael, he's been
Speaker 2: following all of this from the start. The Kinahans have
Speaker 2: been in his sights since his early days on the
Speaker 2: streets of Dublin, and it started with Christopher Kinahan better
Speaker 2: known as Christie or the Dappadon.
Speaker 3: Myself and Chris Canahan has most started working in drugs
Speaker 3: around the same time, and our careers have sort of
Speaker 3: gone in tandem. I was on one side of the
Speaker 3: fence and he's on the other.
Speaker 2: Michael first comes across Christy in the mid eighties. It's
Speaker 2: at the height of Dublin's heroin problems.
Speaker 3: I was aware that there was somebody behind the distribution
Speaker 3: network within Dublin. The name Christy Kinahan came up. I
Speaker 3: had never heard of him. I had made some inquiries
Speaker 3: and I'd heard that he was best described as a
Speaker 3: fraudster and he would go around bouncing checks, you know,
Speaker 3: he could talk to wasn't a real criminal, he was,
Speaker 3: you know, a suave sort of a guy.
Speaker 2: Michael starts looking into Christy Kinahan and he learns that
Speaker 2: he grew up in a middle class family in Dublin.
Speaker 2: He went to the same school that the writer James
Speaker 2: Joyce had attended seventy years earlier when he was a kid.
Speaker 2: Christie's family lived in the UK for a bit, and
Speaker 2: he sometimes puts on an English accent. He's also acquired
Speaker 2: some expensive tastes, sports cars, nice clothes, and luxury apartments.
Speaker 2: As Michael watches him, he can tell us not just
Speaker 2: bounce checks. Covering Christie's extravagant lifestyle is drug money and
Speaker 2: Christy he seems to have come up with a new
Speaker 2: distribution model. One that's different from the other heroine dealers.
Speaker 3: He had rented a luxury apartment away from grotty streets
Speaker 3: and drug dealing and was using it as the nerve center.
Speaker 3: He's paranoid, so he'd only trust himself, and he reckoned
Speaker 3: he was in such a safe place and that he
Speaker 3: was unknown that he could hold the drugs and maybe
Speaker 3: get one or two trusted people to take them from him,
Speaker 3: and they will go and cut it and distribute it.
Speaker 2: The location of Christie's base of operations is so unlikely
Speaker 2: that Michael actually doubts it at first, but then he
Speaker 2: sees Christy arriving at the block of flats.
Speaker 3: Fortunately for us, he drove a flash red sports cart
Speaker 3: and it's confirmed.
Speaker 2: It's nineteen eighty six and Michael's undercover sting operations are
Speaker 2: by now well established. If Christie's holding heroin in that apartment,
Speaker 2: that's where Michael wants to stage a sting.
Speaker 3: You just can't hang around a place for days and
Speaker 3: with cameras and sit in another adjoining apartment complexes. You've
Speaker 3: got to put yourself into a position. So we just decided, look,
Speaker 3: let's go in as workmen, and myself and another guy
Speaker 3: went in as workmen and carrying on our work tools.
Speaker 2: Michael's with a colleague and they go inside the block
Speaker 2: of flats. They're dressed as electricians. They start going around,
Speaker 2: knocking on doors and asking residents if they can check
Speaker 2: their lights.
Speaker 3: One or two of the residents asked us to try
Speaker 3: and fix fridges and stuff. So we just sort of
Speaker 3: ran with the flow and it worked.
Speaker 2: There in the corridor was Christie.
Speaker 3: He passed me in the hall. I saw him go
Speaker 3: in and out and I realized who he was.
Speaker 2: So Michael calls him back up and braces himself to
Speaker 2: go in.
Speaker 3: You don't know if somebody behind that door has a gun.
Speaker 3: You don't know how many people are behind that door.
Speaker 3: You could go in and a guy could be standing
Speaker 3: there with a machine gun. A guy could be standing
Speaker 3: with a handgun and get the drop on you. As
Speaker 3: they would say, the adrenaline is flowing, you know, your
Speaker 3: heart is racing. Anything could go wrong.
Speaker 2: The door opens, but it's not Christie on the other side.
Speaker 2: It's another man. Mike On and his colleagues pull out
Speaker 2: their search warren and they entered the flat. Where's Christy
Speaker 2: At this point.
Speaker 3: He's sitting at a table eating a sandwich. Can still
Speaker 3: see him sitting out looking as it was a big role.
Speaker 3: He was eating a big salad roll or something. It
Speaker 3: was still in his mouth as we came in the
Speaker 3: door and knee he just he visibly paled and he
Speaker 3: just he just froze. Really, he just froze. Yeah. I
Speaker 3: told him we were the drug squad and with a
Speaker 3: warrant to search the premises. And he put down the
Speaker 3: sandwich and he said, I'm as sick as a parrot
Speaker 3: for the English phrase. He said, is your name Sullivan?
Speaker 3: I said it is. He said, I was told to
Speaker 3: look out for you, and I said, well he should
Speaker 3: have took that advice.
Speaker 2: Did it. I worry you at all that he knew
Speaker 2: who you were.
Speaker 3: When you're in the drugs business, when you're working against
Speaker 3: the organized crime, if you're going to worry about your safety,
Speaker 3: you're on the wrong job.
Speaker 2: After Michael arrests him, Christy Kinahan's charged. He admits to
Speaker 2: owning the drugs and the cash and the fraudulent checks
Speaker 2: that were found inside the apartment. He pleads guilty, and
Speaker 2: while Christie works his way through the legal system, Michael
Speaker 2: starts to get a sense of his character.
Speaker 3: You know, in court and traveling to court, he would
Speaker 3: be trying to learn French or reading books. He thought
Speaker 3: he was a step above everybody.
Speaker 4: He was.
Speaker 3: Reasonably smart, but he was I suppose it's a bit
Speaker 3: of a snob. Really, he wouldn't waste time and he'd
Speaker 3: always look for opportunities.
Speaker 2: By the time Christie's trial comes around, his lawyers come
Speaker 2: up with the defense. He says that his client is
Speaker 2: committed to turning his life around, and he tells the
Speaker 2: court that Christie's learning, He's learning French and Arabic, and
Speaker 2: he's trying to improve himself. Michael is skeptical, but the
Speaker 2: judge buys Chris this story, and then he gives him
Speaker 2: six years in prison. Christy Kinahan is down, but he's
Speaker 2: not out. A few years later, Michael's still doing drug enforcement.
Speaker 2: One night, after work, he decides to go for a run.
Speaker 3: And I glanced over my shoulder and I saw a
Speaker 3: car following me, and so I ran through a series
Speaker 3: of streets and I could see the car was still
Speaker 3: following me, and I went around a corner and stopped
Speaker 3: to tie my lace, and the car sped past me,
Speaker 3: and I glanced at it, and I told to myself,
Speaker 3: I swear that's Chris Connhan. I went back to the
Speaker 3: office and I said, h'm after seeing Chris Connette. She
Speaker 3: couldn't have done Yeah, So it came to pass that
Speaker 3: he was out.
Speaker 2: Christi Kinahan's out of prison and he's only just getting started.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna warn you right up front. I'm known to
Speaker 5: go all over the place.
Speaker 2: So that's Derek Maltz. And Derek's loud, but he's not angry.
Speaker 2: He just talks like this all the time. It's sort
Speaker 2: of the same if he's ordering a pizza or arresting
Speaker 2: a drug kingpin. Derek used to run the Special Operations
Speaker 2: Division of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Speaker 6: When we signed up to be DA, we didn't sign
Speaker 6: up to be firemen where the bell rings, you slide
Speaker 6: down the pole and you go put out the fire.
Speaker 6: We signed up to proactively infiltrate the biggest and baddest
Speaker 6: criminals in the world.
Speaker 2: Derek's been a source of mind for a couple of years.
Speaker 2: It's been a couple of years where I've been having
Speaker 2: to do a lot of networking with law enforcement agents
Speaker 2: around the world because I was writing a book on
Speaker 2: international organized crime. But the thing about police. There's no
Speaker 2: online directory, and the way it works is this, you
Speaker 2: meet someone like Derek, and if you're lucky, he'll introduce
Speaker 2: you to someone else, and so it goes on, and
Speaker 2: it's three these kind of connections. I've met police from
Speaker 2: the US, France, the Netherlands, the UK Island and more.
Speaker 2: In each agency they have their own culture, their own vibe.
Speaker 2: And Derek, he couldn't mean more on brand for the DEA.
Speaker 2: And maybe that's because it's pretty much in his blood.
Speaker 5: He worked thirty years my father in the DEA.
Speaker 6: My father did a lot of work with the heroin
Speaker 6: traffickers in New York, you know, getting drugs from you know,
Speaker 6: Italian organized crime. At the time, when I was thirteen
Speaker 6: years old, my father actually took me out on a
Speaker 6: surveillance following a female who was connected to a heroin fugitive.
Speaker 6: And so he thought it was a good idea to
Speaker 6: put a thirteen year old kid in the government vehicle,
Speaker 6: follow into a high rise hotel in a very bad
Speaker 6: area in New York City and send his kid into
Speaker 6: the elevator with the target to see what apartments she
Speaker 6: went into.
Speaker 5: So I guess my law enforcement.
Speaker 6: Career actually started when I was like between nine and
Speaker 6: thirteen years old.
Speaker 2: Derek's father was tackling the growing problems caused by heroin.
Speaker 2: But by the time Derek started working for the DEA,
Speaker 2: there was a different drug rapidly taking market share.
Speaker 6: America was getting completely bombarded with cocaine and crack and
Speaker 6: just so many problems violence, crime, okay, and all of
Speaker 6: the cocaine at that time was coming from Colombia.
Speaker 2: Columbia has always been one of the biggest producers of coca,
Speaker 2: the plant that cocaine is derived from. The cost of
Speaker 2: growing and processing coca is low and the markups are huge.
Speaker 2: The supply chain is controlled by powerful cortails.
Speaker 5: The cartels. They're in the business to make money.
Speaker 6: They run these organizations like a fortune five hundred company
Speaker 6: in the sense of they want to maximize profits and
Speaker 6: reduce risks.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, these Latin American
Speaker 2: drug kingpins they captured the world's attention. Names you might
Speaker 2: have heard of, like Pablo Escobar or El Chappo Gusman.
Speaker 2: The American market for cocaine it got bigger, and the
Speaker 2: cartels they became more and more powerful, so US law enforcement.
Speaker 2: They ramped up their response.
Speaker 5: The DEA established a Kingpins strategy.
Speaker 6: The United States attorneys around America started engaging a lot more.
Speaker 5: We started getting enhanced sentencing.
Speaker 6: Guidelines for drug traffickers around America, and we started working
Speaker 6: very closely with the Colombian National Police.
Speaker 2: It was a controversial strategy. Not everyone was comfortable with
Speaker 2: the DA jumping into other countries and arresting people, but
Speaker 2: it got results. Hundreds of cartel members were extradited from
Speaker 2: Columbia to the US on cocaine trafficking charges, and it
Speaker 2: made life for them really difficult. So the cartels pivoted
Speaker 2: because moving cocaine loads into the US no longer seemed
Speaker 2: as appealing as it used to be.
Speaker 6: You got to remember, the Colombians are like entrepreneurs, very
Speaker 6: very smart. They studied their failures. They didn't want to
Speaker 6: sit in American jails.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 6: They advanced their communications, they compartmentalized their operations, They insulated
Speaker 6: themselves from prosecution in America.
Speaker 2: But to do this, the Colombian cartels needed a new market,
Speaker 2: one which was not the United States, a place that
Speaker 2: would not get people like Derek on their case. And
Speaker 2: this is a key moment in Christy Kinahan's story, because
Speaker 2: the market the Colombians choose, it's Western Europe, and.
Speaker 6: They started bombing Europe with massive amounts of cocaine. Like
Speaker 6: I said, if you're in a business, there's really two
Speaker 6: things you got to keep in mind. Increased profits reduce risk. Well,
Speaker 6: cocaine trafficking in Europe was a home run for the cartels.
Speaker 2: So by the early naughties, the South American cartails are
Speaker 2: busy building up trusted networks of distributors in Europe and
Speaker 2: there are hubs emerging places filled with people eager to
Speaker 2: do business with them. Amsterdam is the perfect base for
Speaker 2: anyone who's looking to expand their criminal network. The first
Speaker 2: thing's where it's situated. It's in the center of Western Europe,
Speaker 2: and so they're regular flights and trains to anywhere in
Speaker 2: the world. And secondly, it's a city that's close to
Speaker 2: two of the world's largest container ports, Rotterdam and Antwerp,
Speaker 2: and that's the critical infrastructure for bringing almost all goods
Speaker 2: into Europe, including vast shipments of cocaine. At the same time,
Speaker 2: European economic growth and integration was ramping up, borders are
Speaker 2: coming down and the single currency, the Euro is coming together,
Speaker 2: and broader globalization is making the world even smaller. During
Speaker 2: its golden age, Amsterdam was a hub, and it was
Speaker 2: a hub for diamonds, spices, and now it's becoming a
Speaker 2: hub again because over the next few decades the cocaine
Speaker 2: market will explode. In nineteen eighty six, less than five
Speaker 2: tons of cocaine was seized in Europe, according to the
Speaker 2: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. But by the
Speaker 2: mid nineties this has grown to around twenty five tons.
Speaker 2: And then flash forward to twenty twenty one, they're now
Speaker 2: seizing a record breaking two hundred and forty tons, almost
Speaker 2: ten times more. And the thing is that's just a
Speaker 2: tiny proportion of the actual amount that gets in, So
Speaker 2: the true size of the market it's much much bigger.
Speaker 2: Perhaps it's over one thousand tons a year, or maybe
Speaker 2: even more.
Speaker 3: Cocaine was seen as a rich man's drug. Young populations,
Speaker 3: affluent population, disposable income people see cocaine as sexy. It's
Speaker 3: great to have. We'll have a few drinks and we'll
Speaker 3: take some cocaine and we'll party throughout the night. And
Speaker 3: they would never stick a needle in their round They
Speaker 3: probably wouldn't take an ecstasy pill because they wouldn't know
Speaker 3: what's in it. But coke looks quite and clean and bright,
Speaker 3: and you see it on the movies and that everyone's
Speaker 3: doing it and it's great and it's I wouldn't really
Speaker 3: get addictive. That's what people think. That's how it's marketed.
Speaker 3: The reason Europe has such a large market is because
Speaker 3: the money is there, the profits are there. No criminal
Speaker 3: organization were to salt would not be involved in cocaine.
Speaker 3: In other words, cocaine is the fuel by which organized
Speaker 3: crime operates.
Speaker 2: Derek says, the Colombian hotels immediately saw there was a
Speaker 2: huge opportunity in Europe.
Speaker 6: So why do I want to sell If I'm a
Speaker 6: cartel leader in Columbia, why do I want to sell
Speaker 6: cocaine in America for twenty thousand dollars you know kilogram
Speaker 6: when I could send it into Europe and make double triple.
Speaker 6: And then when you look at Antwerp and Rotterdam and
Speaker 6: look at the amount of maritime business that's being done,
Speaker 6: how the hell are they going to be able to
Speaker 6: properly monitor the vine that's coming into those ports. So
Speaker 6: guess what drug traffic is transnational criminals are going to
Speaker 6: take total advantage of weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and that's what
Speaker 6: they've done.
Speaker 2: And so in the mid two thousands, Derek realizes that
Speaker 2: the DA's strategy needs to change. They need a global
Speaker 2: network just like the cartels are building. So they start
Speaker 2: to work more closely with national law enforcement agencies. They
Speaker 2: start to share more information and work jointly on more investigations.
Speaker 6: The command and control leadership for all of these international
Speaker 6: drug traffic and organizations is all overseas.
Speaker 5: It's not in America.
Speaker 6: So how the hell are you going to do your
Speaker 6: job if you don't work very closely and cooperatively collaboratively
Speaker 6: with your partners in these countries all over the world. Okay,
Speaker 6: so I made it a goal to kind of break
Speaker 6: down walls, not only in the US but around the world.
Speaker 2: In the mid twenty tens, Christi Kinhan sets up a
Speaker 2: consulting company and on the website there's a motto. I
Speaker 2: take it as a kind of guiding principle for how
Speaker 2: Christy built his empire. Being in the game is not
Speaker 2: as important as staying ahead of it. But it's not
Speaker 2: just strategy that helps him stay ahead of the game,
Speaker 2: Christy turns out to be the right man in the
Speaker 2: right place at the right time. Nineteen ninety two, Christy
Speaker 2: gets out of prison just as a huge criminal opportunity
Speaker 2: that Derek described is about to open up. Only one
Speaker 2: year later, he's in trouble again, and this time it's
Speaker 2: for stealing travelers checks from a bank. He's charged, he
Speaker 2: gets out on bail, and then Christie skips the country
Speaker 2: for one of those new European hubs, Amsterdam.
Speaker 3: A lot of Irish criminals meant it in Netherlands to
Speaker 3: get away from the Irish police. It was suitable because
Speaker 3: it was sufficiently far away from the UK, who were
Speaker 3: quite proactive and Ireland. It was a two hour flight
Speaker 3: an hour and a half flight maybe, and you were there.
Speaker 3: Like most Irish criminals when they go to the Netherlands,
Speaker 3: it opens up a new world for them. You were
Speaker 3: in the league of wholesalers, or the organizers and the strategists.
Speaker 3: It's all about the contacts. It's no different to business
Speaker 3: from Amsterdam.
Speaker 2: Christy continues to ship drugs into island in the UK
Speaker 2: and it's now far harder for Michael and the Irish
Speaker 2: police to keep tabs on what he's doing. Nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2: Because of the outstanding charges against him, Christy rarely travels
Speaker 2: back to Ireland, but there's one of them back home
Speaker 2: that he can't miss. It's his father's funeral. He flies
Speaker 2: back and he gets arrested and the police officer who
Speaker 2: interrogates Christie at the station it's Michael So. More than
Speaker 2: ten years after Michael first arrested him in the flat
Speaker 2: in Dublin, they're back in the same room. Christy doesn't
Speaker 2: want to talk. He's sit there staring at the wall
Speaker 2: in silence. But there's something he just can't resist telling Michael.
Speaker 3: During the interview. He looked at me and he said,
Speaker 3: you think you're so fucking smart? He said, I followed you.
Speaker 3: He said, so, I gave him the red registration number
Speaker 3: of the car that he followed me. I was the
Speaker 3: last conversation I had done. Me didn't talk then after that,
Speaker 3: but chose you his mindset. You know.
Speaker 2: Christy goes back to prison for several years, and like
Speaker 2: his last stretch inside, he uses the time strategically. He reads,
Speaker 2: he studies, he takes courses in law, and works on
Speaker 2: his languages, Dutch and Spanish. He even starts a degree.
Speaker 3: Whereas most criminals will think of the next job, or
Speaker 3: what'll I do when I get out. I bet you
Speaker 3: I could do that robbery and I could get some money,
Speaker 3: he would think further down the road, far more strategically.
Speaker 3: He was always trying to look for angles and improve
Speaker 3: himself and learned from his mistakes.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and one, Christy gets out and he leaves
Speaker 2: Ireland again for continental Europe.
Speaker 4: Would have been when Christopher Senior had only come out
Speaker 4: of prison. That's when I would have first heard that
Speaker 4: the Kinahan name.
Speaker 2: Seamus Boland is Detective Chief Superintendent in the Irish Police.
Speaker 2: Seamus and his colleagues, they've been trying to keep tabs
Speaker 2: on Christy even though he's now far away from Ireland
Speaker 2: and they can see he's becoming more global, more dangerous,
Speaker 2: and more powerful.
Speaker 4: I would have been involved in investigations going back as
Speaker 4: far as two thousand and three, significant investigations with significant
Speaker 4: drug seizures which were associated with the Kinahan organized crime group.
Speaker 4: So you know, the Kinnan organized crime group has been
Speaker 4: the primary group for the last twenty twenty five years
Speaker 4: that built the networks applying drugs and firearms dist jurisdiction
Speaker 4: with Dot a DOT.
Speaker 2: Over the years, Christie will be arrested again several times,
Speaker 2: but he always seems to manage to get off on
Speaker 2: relatively light sentences. For the police. It feels like Christie's
Speaker 2: living up to his business mantra. He's staying one step
Speaker 2: ahead of the game. Christian his partners build operations in Spain, Holland,
Speaker 2: the UK, and An Island. But it goes wider than that.
Speaker 2: There's this leaked diplomatic cable from the US embassy in
Speaker 2: Sierra Leone. It's in two thousand and nine and it
Speaker 2: contains intelligence about a Kinahan associate coming into the country
Speaker 2: to help them ship drugs through Africa. And then Irish
Speaker 2: police realize that Christi Kinahan's connections go much wider than
Speaker 2: they ever could have imagined. Remember that morning in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: We heard about it in episode one when the Dutch
Speaker 2: murder broker is caught in a Kinahan safe house in Dublin.
Speaker 2: The murder broker who's connected to the assassination of a
Speaker 2: man who's been on the run from the Iranian government
Speaker 2: for thirty years. So now we've got what looks like
Speaker 2: a state sponsored hit the sort of thing usually carried
Speaker 2: out by spies or special forces operatives, and it's connected
Speaker 2: to the Kinahan cartel. In that moment, the Irish police
Speaker 2: don't yet have all the information to grasp exactly what
Speaker 2: it means, but it shows that Christi Kinahan, the man
Speaker 2: who started out selling heroin in Dublin in a flat
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties, has evolved into a different breed
Speaker 2: of crime boss.
Speaker 4: What you're seeing there is such a close network of
Speaker 4: people who obviously work together. That's how organized crime has
Speaker 4: developed across Europe. So I think no different too small
Speaker 4: companies that all of a sudden get bought up by
Speaker 4: bigger companies, and all of a sudden there are multinational companies.
Speaker 4: That's how the drug gangs have manifested. They're like a
Speaker 4: business network, they're organized crime networks.
Speaker 2: Christi Kinahan's network will reach its peak when Europe's most
Speaker 2: powerful and dangerous criminals gather his son's wedding. But it's
Speaker 2: a long way from Dublin to Dubai. To understand how
Speaker 2: the supercartel was born, we have to look at an
Speaker 2: important turning point in Christi Kinhan's criminal strategy. It's a
Speaker 2: time when Christie's thinking about the future. He's got two sons,
Speaker 2: Daniel and Christopher Junior, and they've got no criminal convictions.
Speaker 2: They're clean, and perhaps Christy begins to think with his
Speaker 2: sons by his side. Together they can take what began
Speaker 2: as a tiny heroin hustle in a Dublin flat into
Speaker 2: the international criminal stratosphere. Daniel, the eldest son, is being
Speaker 2: groomed as his successor, but like all family businesses, they're
Speaker 2: at their most vulnerable at a time of succession. His
Speaker 2: power was challenged here in Dublin, and he was going
Speaker 2: to lash out and make sure everyone knew who he was.
Speaker 3: You cannot go round like al Capone. You can, but
Speaker 3: you'll only last so long.
Speaker 2: That's next time on Hot Money. Hot Money is a
Speaker 2: production of The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It was
Speaker 2: written and reported by me Myles Johnson, and if you've
Speaker 2: got any leads or information about this story, you can
Speaker 2: email me at new narcosat FT dot com. The series
Speaker 2: producer is Peggy Sutton. Edith Russolo is the associate producer.
Speaker 2: Fact checking is by Arthur Gompertz. Jason Gambrell and Amanda
Speaker 2: k Wong are the mixing engineers, sound design from Jake Gorsky.
Speaker 2: Jeremy Walmsley wrote the original music. Our editor is Sarah Nix,
Speaker 2: and the executive producers are Jacob Goldstein and Cheryl Brumley.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Laura Clark, Alistair Macki Breen Turner, Jude Webber,
Speaker 2: and rich Ward