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Speaker 2: Previously on Hot Money, US undercover agents made a connection
Speaker 2: between money launderers working for European drug traffickers and top
Speaker 2: level officials in Iran. It was part of a ski
Speaker 2: to help the regime evade American sanctions and source heavy weapons.
Speaker 2: This time, a whole new money laundering operation comes into view,
Speaker 2: invented by the man at the top of the Dubai Supercartel,
Speaker 2: Daniel Kinahan. Back in episode four, we left him living
Speaker 2: a life of luxury in Dubai. He just got married
Speaker 2: and business was booming as the supercartel joined forces to
Speaker 2: grow their trafficking operations. Across Europe and Daniel his new
Speaker 2: career as a boxing manager. It was about to take off.
Speaker 2: Remember back in Spain, he helped open a gym called
Speaker 2: MTK and signed up and coming boxers from Ireland. In
Speaker 2: the UK, he set them up in nice villas and
Speaker 2: hired the best trainers and arranged their fights. Unlike his father,
Speaker 2: Daniel appeared to like being a public figure to revel
Speaker 2: in the attention he got. He was living a dual life,
Speaker 2: enjoying the status of a top drug trafficker and the
Speaker 2: image of a high flying boxing promoter. It seemed to
Speaker 2: me that he thought boxing was his path to being
Speaker 2: accepted as a legitimate businessman, but something inside him meant
Speaker 2: he just couldn't leave the world of crime behind. Now
Speaker 2: it's twenty twenty, Daniel kinahans in Dubai and he's taken
Speaker 2: his boxing promotion business there with him. He's working on
Speaker 2: the biggest boxing deal of his life and if he
Speaker 2: pulls it off, it will catapult him to the very
Speaker 2: top of the sport.
Speaker 3: Hello there, I'm just after getting off the phone with
Speaker 3: Daniel Kinahan.
Speaker 2: That's world famous heavyweight champion Tyson Fury. He's a fast
Speaker 2: talking shaven headed nineteen stone Man Mountain and on that
Speaker 2: afternoon he's even more excitable than usual. He posts on
Speaker 2: social media, He's just informed.
Speaker 3: Me that the biggest fight in Bridges boxing history has
Speaker 3: just been agreed.
Speaker 4: Gear that my boy.
Speaker 5: Big shout out done.
Speaker 6: He got this done.
Speaker 3: Two fight deal Tyson Fury versus Anthony josh next year.
Speaker 2: The announcement it stuns the world of boxing. After winning
Speaker 2: a world heavyweight title five years earlier, Fury's career it's
Speaker 2: been in a slump, but since meeting Daniel Kinahan, he's
Speaker 2: made an epic comeback. He's beaten the previously undefeated and
Speaker 2: reigning WBC champion Deonte Wilder in this huge Las Vegas showdown,
Speaker 2: and that means Fury's upcoming bout against fellow British heavyweight
Speaker 2: Anthony Joshua. It's immediately billed as one of the biggest
Speaker 2: fights in the history of the sport. It's going to
Speaker 2: be an international extravaganza broadcast across the world. Pay per
Speaker 2: view sales and sponsorship are going to generate hundreds of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars and Fury he's crediting Daniel Kinahan with
Speaker 2: pulling the whole thing together, and Daniel's not only organizing
Speaker 2: these box office prize fights, He's also started to rub
Speaker 2: shoulders with Royalty. Around the same time that Fury's fights announced,
Speaker 2: Daniels signed up as a special advisor on combat sports
Speaker 2: by a company belonging to the Prince of Bahrain. The
Speaker 2: press release describes him as an international boxing powerbroker. And
Speaker 2: shortly before that, Daniel shows up with a charity gala
Speaker 2: in Kazakhstan wearing a tuxedo and sitting next to him
Speaker 2: is none other than Bob Aarum, one of the most
Speaker 2: influential figures in boxing history.
Speaker 1: Aram.
Speaker 2: He's promoted Muhammad Ali and he's an inductee into the
Speaker 2: Boxing Hall of Fame.
Speaker 5: We have great confidence in Kenahan. We think he's very very,
Speaker 5: very honest, very astute. He has great connections.
Speaker 2: And now he's singing the praises of Daniel Kinahan.
Speaker 5: You know, I like to deal with guys, no nonsense,
Speaker 5: people whose word is their bond, and that's what it's
Speaker 5: been with Daniel.
Speaker 2: But just as Daniel Kinahan's reputation as a boxing magnate
Speaker 2: starts to soar, some people are starting to look more
Speaker 2: closely at the source of his fortune. I'm Miles Johnson
Speaker 2: and from the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. This is
Speaker 2: Hot Money, season two, the New Narcos, episode seven, Against
Speaker 2: the Ropes. The thing that first pulled me into this
Speaker 2: story was when a source told me, if you really
Speaker 2: want to understand the exploding European cocaine trade, you need
Speaker 2: to take a close look at a murder in a
Speaker 2: small Dutch town. And that led me to an Amsterdam
Speaker 2: murder broker, a Dublin safehouse, the Kinnahans, and then the
Speaker 2: Iranian government. For a while, the way this connection worked,
Speaker 2: it just wasn't clear, and then we found something. The
Speaker 2: thing that links these unlikely characters together is the mechanics
Speaker 2: of sanctions of Asian and money laundering. But if anyone
Speaker 2: can help me really understand how all of this works,
Speaker 2: it's a guy called Quentin mug.
Speaker 7: I'm a French police commander. I am currently working in
Speaker 7: the EUROPEOL which he's the European agency for criminal police.
Speaker 2: I first met Quentin after other police contacts told me
Speaker 2: that he was one of the best in the world
Speaker 2: at complex money laundering cases. He's got dark, floppy hair,
Speaker 2: a stubbly beard, and he talks with the unassuming calmness
Speaker 2: of a gallic colombo. He doesn't miss a trick if
Speaker 2: you're trying to launder your drugs money in a shipman
Speaker 2: of seafood. He's the sort of guy who'll swivel around
Speaker 2: at the last minute and say just one more thing.
Speaker 7: You know, instinct kicks in. You tell me is that
Speaker 7: you imported a hundred thousand euros worth of shrimps. But
Speaker 7: what shrimp was at a frozen shrimp big streams? But
Speaker 7: I guess cash scrips? Then what was exactly in the continue?
Speaker 7: You don't know. That's that's how it.
Speaker 2: Works, Quentin. He lives and breathes this sort of stuff,
Speaker 2: and he's actually written a book about it. It's called
Speaker 2: gen Salle or Dirty Money.
Speaker 7: So I started to pick up on these aspects of
Speaker 7: the job because essentially everybody wakes up for money, including
Speaker 7: the criminals, and I really started to enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Quentin actually worked on part of the DEA's investigation into
Speaker 2: Iman Kobesi and ended up arresting a French associate of hers.
Speaker 2: He says there's one important reason why drug traffickers might
Speaker 2: end up working with someone like Kobesi. Criminals and sanctioned governments.
Speaker 2: They've got a problem in common. They can't just freely
Speaker 2: move money around the international banking system, so both need
Speaker 2: to find more creative methods, methods that law enforcement agencies
Speaker 2: can't track.
Speaker 7: And that is the beauty of it, to be honest,
Speaker 7: because basically this appeal for and a NIMI is something
Speaker 7: that the wood underworld has in common.
Speaker 2: As a cocaine market in Europe has boomed, massive amounts
Speaker 2: of dirty cash are started to pile up and to
Speaker 2: make their businesses work to pay suppliers in Latin America,
Speaker 2: pay henchmen, or buy a mansion in Dubai. The car
Speaker 2: tells they need to keep that money from getting stuck.
Speaker 2: It's a critical logistical headache of being a drug trafficker
Speaker 2: but moving billions secretly around the world. It's actually quite hard.
Speaker 2: Imagine a drug trafficker has say ten million dollars in
Speaker 2: the Netherlands and.
Speaker 7: You would like that to be in Dubai. So now
Speaker 7: he's got a number of options. You could move it himself,
Speaker 7: as that's been setting some cash careers, taking zerisk of
Speaker 7: being spudied at the airport. He could try to transform
Speaker 7: it into something else, maybe jewelry, wa cheese, whatever. But
Speaker 7: again you need to transport it. You could try to
Speaker 7: hide these tracks by converting that money into other goods
Speaker 7: such as cars, and then ship them away, get the
Speaker 7: cars somewhere in another country, sell them, justify the profit
Speaker 7: and take it away. But then you need companies, you
Speaker 7: need important But it's complete lydy. Oh, you can just
Speaker 7: pick up your phone.
Speaker 2: Pick up your phone and call a money broker. They're
Speaker 2: specialists to operate in a huge underground banking system and
Speaker 2: it's critical infrastructure for the underworld.
Speaker 7: So I would simply contact the money brokers. The money
Speaker 7: broker would send me a money collector. That money collector
Speaker 7: will come to me, usually with a banknote.
Speaker 2: It's pretty hard to feel comfortable handing over massive suitcases
Speaker 2: of cash to a stranger, so they've come up with
Speaker 2: a sort of verification system. The person picking up the
Speaker 2: cash they have to show a serial number of a
Speaker 2: specific banknote to prove their identity.
Speaker 7: And it was in two three days, I would have
Speaker 7: an equivalent talment of money in the country I want.
Speaker 2: So it's sort of like a secret currency exchange service,
Speaker 2: but for major criminals. But the concept that took me
Speaker 2: a little while to get my head around is that
Speaker 2: the actual physical cash it doesn't ever move. It stays
Speaker 2: in the same place. The networks have supplies of cash
Speaker 2: in different countries, in places like warehouses, and instead of
Speaker 2: moving it, they simply pay you out from the supply
Speaker 2: they have in the place you need it, minus a commission.
Speaker 2: Of course, this works because people doing the reverse trade
Speaker 2: to you, customers moving money in the other direction, they
Speaker 2: will replenish the supply of cash from where you collected
Speaker 2: it at one of the networks to facto offices around
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 7: The most basic often comes in the form of a
Speaker 7: little shop grocery stores that opens late and so very
Speaker 7: expensive apples, and then everybody goes. But how is it
Speaker 7: possible that it is still open where.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of that.
Speaker 2: Before I'd heard about this, I'd assumed that modern money
Speaker 2: laundering was high tech, using things like cryptocurrencies or complex
Speaker 2: financial instruments. Actually really surprised to learn that it's pretty
Speaker 2: old school. Quentin says that this modern shadow banking system,
Speaker 2: it's similar to the principles of hawala networks that were
Speaker 2: used by Eastern traders from the fourteenth century.
Speaker 7: So the Hawala system is basically a very ancient system
Speaker 7: that consisting is based on trust and it's based on
Speaker 7: a network of Hawala dhas before running this kind of
Speaker 7: informal network. It was used a long time ago, even
Speaker 7: in the Middle Aged when you were traveling, you didn't
Speaker 7: want to, you know, wander around the roads with golden use.
Speaker 7: So what you would do you would make a deposits
Speaker 7: in the merchant who has an agreement with his suppliers.
Speaker 7: Let's say I don't know it's the Middle East, and
Speaker 7: then when you would arrive there, you would choose a
Speaker 7: note and somebody would give you an equivalent amount of
Speaker 7: money based on trust.
Speaker 2: I'm also just interested in the capacity of his systems
Speaker 2: because we're talking hundreds of millions of not billions potentially
Speaker 2: of money. The liquidity that deep that you can move
Speaker 2: that much money through this.
Speaker 7: Start it's going to be a short term swer it yes, wow,
Speaker 7: it is.
Speaker 2: So there are billions of dollars circulating through these black
Speaker 2: market brokers, and it's not just drug barons who are
Speaker 2: using them. There are tax evaders, human traffickers, warlords, terrorist groups,
Speaker 2: and people moving money for sanctioned governments. There's this strange
Speaker 2: thing in Europe and it's that the number of physical
Speaker 2: banknotes in circulation over the last decade, it's actually gone up,
Speaker 2: but the number of people paying for stuff with cash,
Speaker 2: it's gone down. And central banks they can have a
Speaker 2: pretty hard time knowing where all of that physical cash
Speaker 2: has gone. In the UK alone, the Bank of England,
Speaker 2: it believes that there's about fifty billion pounds in cash
Speaker 2: in circulation, but it just can't be accounted for. No
Speaker 2: one knows where it is. And meanwhile, Quentin's seeing signs
Speaker 2: that the number of money brokers is going on.
Speaker 7: I've seen the commission drop. It's not a good sign
Speaker 7: because they're asking for less and less money. Zans that
Speaker 7: there are more and more competitors and there is more
Speaker 7: and more money out there.
Speaker 2: Like Quentin said at the start, everybody in the world
Speaker 2: a crime. They wake up for money. And over in
Speaker 2: the United States, one lawyer is starting to dig deeper
Speaker 2: into the Kinahan money machine.
Speaker 4: In the Middle East, Daniel Kinahan is living in Dubai.
Speaker 4: They're having a party in Dubai. They're getting away with,
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of stuff. It seems to be
Speaker 4: in Dubai and he felt, I think untouchable.
Speaker 2: Eric Montalvo is an attorney in Washington, DC and before
Speaker 2: getting into law, he served for twenty one years as
Speaker 2: an active duty marine in the US military in the
Speaker 2: First Golf War in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: When I transitioned into the civilian community, I eventually started
Speaker 4: my firm in twenty eleven and I practice national international law.
Speaker 2: And then one day in twenty twenty, Eric got a
Speaker 2: call from a boxing promoter who was furious one of
Speaker 2: the promoters most successful fighters was leaving. He'd switch to
Speaker 2: another promotion company, one called MTK. It's the company that
Speaker 2: Daniel Kinahan co founded back in Spain, and by twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, MTK Global, like Daniel, is based in Dubai.
Speaker 2: MTK has become a major player in the boxing world
Speaker 2: and this fighter he wants to move over to them,
Speaker 2: but he's still under contract, so there's a dispute, and
Speaker 2: the current promoter asked Eric to take on his case.
Speaker 4: Before this, I was not really a boxing litigator, if
Speaker 4: you will, like the boxing profession was not something that
Speaker 4: I was intimately familiar with in terms of the business side. Right,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm a fan and I would watch a fight,
Speaker 4: you know what have you, But I really had never
Speaker 4: got from a litigation standpoint into the back end of
Speaker 4: what was going on, so I really was in a
Speaker 4: learning curve on this.
Speaker 2: Eric's not studying the contracts, and MTK looks just like
Speaker 2: any other multinational company.
Speaker 4: On its face, it looked very legitimate and very powerful
Speaker 4: compared to even any US company. No one could really
Speaker 4: compete with them, and they had endorsements from high level
Speaker 4: boxing professionals, right Bob aram So my first review of
Speaker 4: them was that they were a big professional boxing corporation
Speaker 4: international and that I just had to hold them accountable
Speaker 4: for contract issues.
Speaker 2: But then Eric comes across the name Daniel Kinahan. At
Speaker 2: the time, back in twenty twenty one, most of the
Speaker 2: boxing world had embraced Kinahan as a legitimate businessman, Eric's
Speaker 2: or something else.
Speaker 4: When I focused in on him, obviously, I'm a former prosecutor,
Speaker 4: so you know that got my eyebrows raised.
Speaker 2: Now, there's a long history in boxing of people with
Speaker 2: let's say, a colorful past, and initially Eric thought that
Speaker 2: the rumors around Daniel Kinahan would have no bearing on
Speaker 2: the contractual dispute. But as Eric started to look at
Speaker 2: MTK's business model, it seemed strange. One of the ways
Speaker 2: that the company was able to recruit so many fighters
Speaker 2: to its roster was by offering them hugely favorable terms,
Speaker 2: terms that seemed to defy financial logic.
Speaker 4: When I started trying to understand the financials of what
Speaker 4: was happening, nothing made sense. No business can spend the
Speaker 4: amount of money in litigation, you know, fighter bonuses, all
Speaker 4: of these things when that money is not coming from fights.
Speaker 2: For example, you could have a situation where a boxer makes,
Speaker 2: say five hundred thousand dollars in a fire, but the
Speaker 2: boxing company promoting them pays them seven hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Where's that money coming from.
Speaker 2: Daniel Kinahan had officially parted ways with MTK back in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. His links to organized crime had made it
Speaker 2: difficult to be the public face of the company.
Speaker 4: Everyone's paying attention to you, probably for a good reason,
Speaker 4: so you know, take a back seat and you're no
Speaker 4: longer part of MTK. The problem is is that mister
Speaker 4: Kinahan wasn't able to do that. He either loved the
Speaker 4: boxing game, loved the limelight whatever it was, but he
Speaker 4: could not help himself, and so he was publicly coming
Speaker 4: out over and over again and participating in the fighting arena.
Speaker 2: And as Eric digs deeper into MTK's finances, he discovers
Speaker 2: that the company seems to have found an innovative way
Speaker 2: of moving money around the globe.
Speaker 4: It became clear to me as a prosecutor that what
Speaker 4: they were doing is they were using the fighters as
Speaker 4: a way to move money through the system. And so preliminarily,
Speaker 4: what I see is that let's say they put a
Speaker 4: million dollars in the fighter's account that wasn't for the
Speaker 4: fighter to keep. What it was was they would then
Speaker 4: take that money out a month or two later, and
Speaker 4: then it would go to a property or go to
Speaker 4: some other venture from the fighter's account. And these were
Speaker 4: typically new accounts, so the fighter would set up a
Speaker 4: new account, there would be a very significant amount of
Speaker 4: money coming in to the account, and then that money
Speaker 4: would leave shortly thereafter, and you go to pay for
Speaker 4: some other thing that's unrelated to the fighter or anything else.
Speaker 4: So that is money laundering.
Speaker 2: Let's stop here for a moment, because what Eric claims
Speaker 2: is happening using boxing to launder money. It's a pretty
Speaker 2: serious allegation. Up until now, most people have seen Daniel
Speaker 2: Kinahan's rise in boxing as an attempt to clean up
Speaker 2: his reputation. But maybe, if Eric's right, it was more
Speaker 2: than that. The boxing and the crime, they weren't two
Speaker 2: different worlds, they were part of the same thing. Eric's
Speaker 2: next move is to file a legal case in California
Speaker 2: for his client. It says MTK is quote overseen by
Speaker 2: mister Daniel Kinahan, and that Kinnahan started MTK to quote
Speaker 2: laun the ill gotten gains from drug trafficking. It was
Speaker 2: part of a civil claim seeking compensation from MTK. MTK
Speaker 2: responds it strongly denies what it called wild allegations, and
Speaker 2: it says MTK Global is not a front for a
Speaker 2: European drug cartel, does not engage in money laundering, and
Speaker 2: does not make money from the sale of illicit drugs.
Speaker 2: It also denied having any ongoing ties to Daniel Kinahan.
Speaker 2: We should also be clear that there's no suggestion that
Speaker 2: the boxers associated with MTK were involved in any criminal activity.
Speaker 2: At the time Eric's theory, it wasn't a popular one.
Speaker 4: Most of the people that were around me that knew
Speaker 4: what I was doing thought I was a little bit
Speaker 4: of a crackpot, right like you know, what are you
Speaker 4: talking about. Like, first of all, MTK's legitimate, you know organization.
Speaker 4: I mean, people were saying as Bob Aaron was saying it,
Speaker 4: the California Commissioner was saying it. Everybody was like, you know,
Speaker 4: this Montavo guy is crazy and all of the stuff.
Speaker 8: You're going up in this instance against people who at.
Speaker 5: The time.
Speaker 8: Are seen as extremely dangerous, you know, like some of
Speaker 8: the most dangerous criminals in the whole world, people who
Speaker 8: are linked to multiple, multiple homicides. And I was just
Speaker 8: wondering what you were sort of thinking at the time
Speaker 8: about that part of it.
Speaker 4: I mean, in terms of my own personal safety or.
Speaker 8: In terms of your own personal safety.
Speaker 4: Maybe I'm not, you know, the most normal person in
Speaker 4: the world, but I mean, you know, I went to
Speaker 4: war at twenty right, I'm not gonna not do what
Speaker 4: I have to do because I'm afraid that's somehow shape
Speaker 4: or form, someone's gonna want me dead because I'm complaining
Speaker 4: about what they're doing.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 4: I just if that's the case, I shouldn't be an
Speaker 4: attorney right.
Speaker 2: To start the US legal case against Kinahan. They're going
Speaker 2: to have to find him so they can serve him
Speaker 2: the papers and finding a man who's been busy evading
Speaker 2: law enforcement agencies for years. It might sound a bit tricky,
Speaker 2: but Eric had a plan.
Speaker 4: When you're trying to be a legitimate businessman, you have
Speaker 4: to register your business, and so in Dubai it's no
Speaker 4: different right they expect you to file the proper documents,
Speaker 4: et cetera. So once I saw he was in Dubai,
Speaker 4: I focused my efforts there. And if you look at
Speaker 4: Palm Islands, right, there's two of them.
Speaker 2: They're two man made islands jutting out from the coast
Speaker 2: of both engineered in the shape of palm trees so
Speaker 2: that each luxury property has its own waterfront.
Speaker 4: And if you have the amount of money that you
Speaker 4: know mister Kinahan has access to, and you know the
Speaker 4: pictures and everything else you see, it made sense that
Speaker 4: he was likely living on one of those islands.
Speaker 2: So Eric he'd figured out where Daniel Kinahan was living
Speaker 2: in Dubai, and he'd hired someone to go and deliver
Speaker 2: the US court papers to his address. Now, the next
Speaker 2: question was how would Daniel respond. So Daniel's figuring out
Speaker 2: how to deal with this legal case against him, and
Speaker 2: at the same time there are now signs that Dubai,
Speaker 2: once a paradise for your criminals, has begun to crack down.
Speaker 2: The first members of the supercartel are starting to fall.
Speaker 2: Ridu Antargi one of the guests at Daniel Kinahan's wedding
Speaker 2: and a notorious Dutch cocaine boss. He's arrested in Dubai
Speaker 2: and charged with multiple murders, and the Emirate agrees to
Speaker 2: send him back to the Netherlands to face trial. Another
Speaker 2: wedding guest, the Chilean traffick are known as El Rico.
Speaker 2: He's arrested in Latin America and extracited to the Netherlands.
Speaker 2: Two Daniel Kinahan's still safe in Dubai, but the pressure
Speaker 2: back in Ireland is starting to build. There's outrage in
Speaker 2: the Irish Parliament. The day after Tyson Fury posts about
Speaker 2: Kinahan arranging the Joshua fight. Leova redcar Ireland's TISUK, the
Speaker 2: Prime Minister. He says he's taken aback by Kinahan's involvement,
Speaker 2: citing his checkered past. He asks Iland's Foreign ministry to
Speaker 2: talk to the UAE government about it urgently. Days later,
Speaker 2: the Prince of Barren dumps Kinahan as an advisor, and
Speaker 2: Bob Aarum announces that he's going to have or Tyson
Speaker 2: furious negotiations from now on, not Daniel Kinahan. Daniel's now
Speaker 2: on the back foot, and he makes a kind of
Speaker 2: surprising decision. He launches a public relations campaign to save
Speaker 2: his reputation as a legitimate businessman. A bizarre film appears
Speaker 2: on the Internet called The Regency Discover the Truth.
Speaker 6: And this isn't some.
Speaker 2: Cobbled together home video. It's a professional project. It's a
Speaker 2: dramatic reenactment of the assassination attempt against Daniel in twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen in Dublin. It features a handsome actor playing him,
Speaker 2: who's portrayed as the victim in the whole thing.
Speaker 4: When Daniel Kinahan arrived at the Wayne.
Speaker 3: For Clash of the Clans, the first thing that he
Speaker 3: noticed was that there were no Gada to police the event.
Speaker 3: This was unnerving because Daniel was used to having his
Speaker 3: every move shadowed by police.
Speaker 2: Not only that, it's unlikely the film convinced anyone, but
Speaker 2: it showed that Daniel Kinahan was starting to get nervous.
Speaker 2: Back in Dublin, John O'Driscoll, the man in charge of
Speaker 2: Island's response to the Kinahan's wave of violence. He's been
Speaker 2: watching Daniels rise in boxing with frustration.
Speaker 6: The sport of boxing which is very important, and I
Speaker 6: knew it to be so, having policed in inner city
Speaker 6: communities for many years, many kids were diverted from crime
Speaker 6: through an involvement in the sport of boxing, and here
Speaker 6: we saw the Kinahan organization potentially destroying that sport. They
Speaker 6: were corrupting the sport and that was operating at a
Speaker 6: global level.
Speaker 2: John's been trying to come up with a plan, a
Speaker 2: plan to take the Kinahans down. But even if they
Speaker 2: build a bulletproof case, there's another problem. The Kinahans are
Speaker 2: in Dubai, and Dubai has no formal extradition agreement with Ireland.
Speaker 2: John he realizes something.
Speaker 6: That no one entity, no one law enforcement entity, could
Speaker 6: ever achieve any realistic success on its own entackling one
Speaker 6: of these criminal enterprises.
Speaker 2: So John starts flying around the world, meeting with other
Speaker 2: law enforcement agencies, sharing information, discussing strategies. He knows that
Speaker 2: back in twenty ten, police across Europe tried to stop
Speaker 2: the kiinner Hans with Operation Shovel, but the case had
Speaker 2: fallen apart, and John He's determined that will never happen again.
Speaker 2: He needs a silver bullet. Then one morning he's talking
Speaker 2: to a US official when they mentioned something that John
Speaker 2: just hadn't thought about before. Something the US government has
Speaker 2: used to go after people in countries like Russia, Iran,
Speaker 2: and North Korea, countries in which Western governments can't just
Speaker 2: go in and arrest people places like Dubai. What if
Speaker 2: the official asked John, they put the Kiinner Hands under
Speaker 2: economic sanctions the Irish police, they may not be able
Speaker 2: to get close to the kin Hands in Dubai if
Speaker 2: the US Treasury put them under sanctions, that would cut
Speaker 2: them off from their money, the motive for being in
Speaker 2: crime in the first place.
Speaker 6: From that day, it was part of our objective that
Speaker 6: we would acquire sufficient information to provide to the US
Speaker 6: Department of Treasury to encourage it to take on the
Speaker 6: Kinnahans as a target, for them to be placed under
Speaker 6: a list of priorities.
Speaker 2: It was just an idea, but it was a radical one,
Speaker 2: a new tool to target individuals connected to European organized crime.
Speaker 2: John immediately gets to work. He needs to bring in
Speaker 2: as many international partners into the operation as possible, but
Speaker 2: to convince the US Treasury to take action, the joint
Speaker 2: operation needs watertight evidence that the Kinnahans have evolved into
Speaker 2: a global threat.
Speaker 6: Throughout the process, I would have been privy to the
Speaker 6: intelligence that we had gathered ourselves in Ireland, and then
Speaker 6: other jurisdictions had gathered additional information, and bit by bit
Speaker 6: dijigsaw was being put together in terms of establishing how
Speaker 6: significant in fact the Kenahans were on the global stage.
Speaker 2: Months and months passed, with countless meetings between law enforcement
Speaker 2: agencies from different countries sharing the intelligence they've gathered on
Speaker 2: the Kinnahans, and then the US side of the joint
Speaker 2: operation they discovered something pretty big. At the time, it
Speaker 2: was a closely guarded piece of highly sensitive information. John
Speaker 2: tells me it was something about how the Kinahans and
Speaker 2: other members of the Dubai supercartel had been laundering their money,
Speaker 2: about the money brokers that we heard about earlier in
Speaker 2: the episode.
Speaker 6: As time emerged and as the eyes of US law
Speaker 6: enforcement more generally were focused on the Kenhen's, it was
Speaker 6: realized that the money laundering associated with that drugs empire
Speaker 6: involved the Kenahan's utilize organizations that may potentially have links
Speaker 6: to international terrorism.
Speaker 2: As we're talking, as John's telling me this, I want
Speaker 2: to know what he means which international terrorists? Is it
Speaker 2: a group, is it a government? But when you say
Speaker 2: terrorist related to activity, does that relate to any particular countries.
Speaker 2: John doesn't really answer this, so I ask him directly
Speaker 2: the thing I'm thinking, the thing you might be thinking too.
Speaker 2: Is he talking about Iran.
Speaker 6: Well, that would be a conclusion that would be reached
Speaker 6: primarily by the US authorities haven't been satisfied having received
Speaker 6: initially information from the Irish law enforcement, UK law enforcement,
Speaker 6: and they then pursuing that line of inquiry, would then
Speaker 6: have concluded that, in fact, there is potential that there
Speaker 6: is a financing of activity that can could be associations
Speaker 6: with the Iranian station.
Speaker 2: John's saying it in a guarded way, but here's what
Speaker 2: it sounds like to me. It's the money, the money laundering,
Speaker 2: that's the connection between the Kinahans, the supercartel and Iran.
Speaker 2: An Udi Levy, the former head of the Mossad's Economic
Speaker 2: warfare unit, He says the same thing. He tells me
Speaker 2: that Iran's money laundering channels are regularly used by criminal
Speaker 2: networks across the world as well as other sanctioned governments.
Speaker 9: The sanction caused the Iranian to be very creative to
Speaker 9: find I think today the number one in the world
Speaker 9: out of circlements the sanction how to build very very
Speaker 9: smart way to laundering money. They are giving a suggestion
Speaker 9: to the Irusian and other countries and the North Korean
Speaker 9: out to circlements the sanction, they became so expert they.
Speaker 4: Know very well how to do it.
Speaker 2: And as we know, it's not just sanctioned regimes that
Speaker 2: need to find secret ways of moving money around the world.
Speaker 9: No, the direct trafficking need the ideas and their way
Speaker 9: out to build infrastructure that nobody identify. So and they
Speaker 9: run and have today, I think the best infrastructure in
Speaker 9: the world to transfer money from one point to the
Speaker 9: other and that nobody will have identified. So not only
Speaker 9: that they are using the direct trafficking, but they even
Speaker 9: making the world, let's say more bad by allowed the
Speaker 9: cartels and the direct trafficker to use their infrastructure to
Speaker 9: transfer money.
Speaker 2: I really haven't come across any evidence that the members
Speaker 2: of the Supercartel are connected to Iran for ideological reasons.
Speaker 2: It's likely it was just business, the money laundering. It
Speaker 2: was a service, one that worked, but having access to
Speaker 2: new and sophisticated ways to move money, it made the
Speaker 2: rise of stateless drug traffickers like the Supercartel possible. And
Speaker 2: this connection could it be the thing that explains how
Speaker 2: the supercartel got involved in the assassination of Alimatamed Udi
Speaker 2: says the Alimatomed assassination it fits with a pattern he's
Speaker 2: seen of Iran using organized criminals to target their enemies abroad.
Speaker 9: I think Iran is not alone. I think today is
Speaker 9: a new trend by some let's say intelligence forces, that
Speaker 9: it's easier, sometimes cheaper to use drag dealers and criminals
Speaker 9: to make assassination because if they call, you cannot blame Iran,
Speaker 9: you can blame drug trafficking. It's something that related to
Speaker 9: drug trafficking. They are preferred to go to criminal and
Speaker 9: to drug dealers, to pay them money, to give them
Speaker 9: guidance and to send them to the mission.
Speaker 2: But I still have a big question. Is it possible
Speaker 2: to find out who in Iran worked with the supercarteil
Speaker 2: to assassinate Alimtomed to solve this murder?
Speaker 9: Yes, but it will be a little bit difficult because
Speaker 9: they're not stupid. In most of the cases, they're putting
Speaker 9: a buffer between themselves and the last end. Let's say
Speaker 9: something like that. Let's say the Iranian from Good Sports
Speaker 9: Agent well will approach to someone that it will approach
Speaker 9: to somebody else, and then it will approach to the
Speaker 9: third party and will give him the mission.
Speaker 2: To find someone buried deep in a shadowy, hidden world
Speaker 2: where espionage and organized crime me it seems impossible, And
Speaker 2: then I came across a case a top Iranian spy
Speaker 2: arrested in Europe, found with a red notebook full of secrets,
Speaker 2: and perhaps inside that notebook we can find the answer.
Speaker 2: That's next time on our season finale of Hot Money.
Speaker 2: Hot Money is a production of The Financial Times and
Speaker 2: Pushkin Industries. It was written and reported by me Miles Johnson,
Speaker 2: and if you've got any leads or information about this story,
Speaker 2: you can email me at New narcosat FT dot com.
Speaker 2: The series producer is Peggy Sutton. Edith Russello is the
Speaker 2: associate producer. Fact checking is by Arthur Gompertz, Engineering by
Speaker 2: Sarah Bruguerer, sound design from Jake Gorsky, Jeremy Warmsley wrote
Speaker 2: the original music. Our editor is Sarah Nix, and the
Speaker 2: executive producers are Jacob Goldstein and Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks
Speaker 2: to Laura Clark, Alistair Mackie and Breen Turner do