13-08-2025
Kinahan crime clan went from small-time Irish thugs to most world's most wanted gang
Christy Kinahan, the gang leader, catapulted the crime clan from low-level thuggery to doing business with top cartels across the world.
They're the global organised crime clan who started out in the Dublin of the 1970s stealing cars and handling stolen goods.
So when the US Department of State announced rewards of $5million, almost £4million, three years ago for information leading to the capture and conviction of senior Kinahan figures, it was further evidence that this is a crime family now playing in the big league.
Yet it all began in unlikely fashion with Christy Kinahan, born in 1957 into a relatively middle-class family, and whose mother ran a Dublin bed and breakfast.
Kinahan started out on his life in crime in his 20s, dabbling in cheque fraud and linking up with other gangs.
Low-level crime was never enough though for Kinahan and, as a grim heroin epidemic swept his native city in the 1980s, he moved in for his share.
Kinahan was jailed for six years after being arrested in 1986 in connection with more than £100,000 worth of heroin found in his Dublin flat.
But rather than curtailing his activities, his spell in the city's notorious Mountjoy Prison presented an opportunity to develop contacts with other serious players in the drugs trade.
And so, as the 1990s arrived and Dublin began to experience economic growth, Kinahan was well placed to make his bid to rise to the very top of the criminal tree.
He moved for a while to the Netherlands, a major centre in the European drugs scene, and it was a switch which saw business expand dramatically.
Forging further connections, the money poured in and as a new century dawned his two sons, Daniel, born in 1977, and Christopher, born in 1980s, were up for taking the family business to a new level.
Activities stepped up in earnest in the 1990s, rivals were dealt with mercilessly, and no thought was given to the misery brought by the drugs trade other than how much money it could yield.
Now deemed an Organised Crime Group (OCG), the Kinahans took things up a notch still, becoming known in international law enforcement circles as The Kinahan Transnational Criminal Organisation, or KTCO.
The Kinahans count among their allies Colombia drugs cartel Clan Del Golfo while they forged allegiances with groups in Central America, as well as North African OCGs who run drugs into Europe and the UK and Ireland, Chinese triads and OCGs across Europe.
Authorities estimated that by the late 2010s, the Kinahans were part of a super-cartel, also involving Bosnian and Italian mafia, which controlled around a third of all cocaine trafficked into Europe.
With all of this comes intense focus from law enforcement and it is believed that the Kinahans are based now primarily in Dubai, a new home to many leading crime bosses.
Issuing a Wanted Notice against the Kinahan group's senior figures in 2022, the US State Department described the scale of the family's activities, saying: 'After becoming Ireland's most powerful organized crime group, the KTCO quickly transcended international boundaries.
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'The KTCO originally distributed South American cocaine and heroin in Ireland, and later to the United Kingdom and throughout mainland Europe.
'In addition to narcotics trafficking, the Kinahans have engaged in money laundering, firearms trafficking, and murder.'
The US Government department has even set up a dedicated email address inviting anyone with information on the gang's activities to get in touch.
It includes a promise that a phone number will then be sent out for 'follow-up communications' via calls or messages. Such appeals may be fraught with
difficulty, given the group's reputation for violence, and extensive criminal connections.
But sources have said that it can bring success, with one call or key piece of information having the potential to give the authorities the vital break which they require.
Amid the ongoing game of cat and mouse with law enforcement, the gangs also live with the constant fear of being gunned down by a violent rival, another occupational hazard for serious crime players.
But for a family who started out as just another crime group in Dublin, the Kinahans now rule the criminal world, operating a multi-billion dollar crime empire spanning continents, and wielding vast power and influence.
Whether they can finally be dismantled and brought to justice, some 30 years after they first emerged in earnest, their existence and global enterprise pre-sents a major challenge.
And one of the biggest tasks facing the international law enforcement community aiming to tackle the scourge of the drugs trade and the misery which it brings.
