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Posh boy protégé of Christy Kinahan Sr is money laundering link-man between Irish and Chinese gangs

South Dublin man who supplied phones to Kinahans is linked to Chinese money-laundering gang

Mon 26 Jun 2023 at 07:00

A POSH protégé of Christy Kinahan Snr has been revealed as the link man between a Chinese money- laundering operation and Irish drug gangs.

Ciaran O’Sullivan, also known as Sam, was named in a High Court case this week taken by the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) against members of the gang who transferred cash out of Ireland.

The criminal network was targeted in an “intelligence-led” Garda operation in which a series of raids were carried out in Dublin and Wicklow in June 2020, shortly after Dutch and French police hacked the encrypted Encrochat service.

The Sunday World previously revealed how Sam O’Sullivan had supplied Encrochat phones to the Kinahan mob in Ireland.

Now in his late 40s, he grew up in a south Dublin suburb but got involved with the Kinahan mob as it began to emerge as a major player in Holland and later on the Costa Del Sol.

He was found by gardaí during the search operations targeting the Chinese gang in 2020 and later left for Spain, according to sources.

At the time, five business premises and eight residential addresses were searched resulting in the seizure of cash and assets worth €1,035,093.

Cash totalling €733,499 was seized, while €301,594 funds were frozen in Irish bank accounts and four cars were seized along with high-value designer goods.

This week, CAB said the leader of the Chinese gang in Ireland, Peng Fei He, had been observed in O’Sullivan’s company, who was described in court as an old associate of Christy Kinahan senior.

Despite his well-to-do upbringing, O’Sullivan had served time in Spain, where he was convicted in 2004 of drugs offences, and had also been arrested in The Netherlands over amphetamines and guns.

He was previously caught up in a police operation against Jennifer Guinness kidnapper and long-time Kinahan associate John Cunningham in Amsterdam in 2000.

Officers had Cunningham under surveillance as he organised huge shipments of drugs back to Dublin.

Dutch police estimated that he had shipped €150 million worth of drugs, arms and ammunition to gangs in Dublin, Limerick, Belfast, London, Manchester and Liverpool.

O’Sullivan would later be arrested in Spain with Bernard Clancy, a veteran criminal and a childhood friend of Daniel Kinahan, who grew up in the Oliver Bond flats in south-inner city Dublin.

Clancy was one of the seven individuals listed by the US Office of Foreign Asset Control when they posted a $5 million reward for each of the three Kinahans last year.

Since the early 2000s, Clancy has spent most of his time in Spain and was described by the American authorities as a “key Kinahan Organised Crime Group (KOCG) lieutenant”.

US officials stated: “Bernard Clancy is a key KOCG lieutenant, who, among other duties, is tasked by Daniel Kinahan with providing wages to elements within the KOCG and payments to others.”

O’Sullivan is also linked to Chris Casserly, a CAB target and drug dealer in Ireland, who was supplied from The Netherlands by Cunningham.

While Dutch cops moved in on Cunningham’s operation in 2000, gardaí in Dublin targeted searches against Casserly’s network, which saw him flee the country with his then associate Sam O’Sullivan.

In 2003, Chief Superintendent Felix McKenna, then the chief officer of CAB, said in an affidavit that he believed Casserly was for many years deeply involved in drug trafficking into Ireland.

The leader of the Chinese gang targeted by CAB this week, Peng Fei He, is no longer in Ireland, it was heard in court.

In 2016, he was previously caught with €140,000 worth of cannabis after accepting a package from an undercover officer posing as a courier.

Fei He pleaded guilty after being caught at an address in Dublin 7 in November 2015 and was given a six-year sentence, reduced to four-and-a- half on appeal.

At his trial, the judge was told Fei He lived in squalor and had a €5,000 gambling debt and that he was not the main beneficiary of the drug deal.

When he had been stopped by gardaí with the drugs in his car he claimed he had pornography DVDs in the boot and said he was to earn €200 to collect them.

He was interviewed several times and claimed he had been put under threat to collect the package because he owed €5,000 in a gambling debt.

He later told officers that the packages had originated from Spain and that he was due to be paid €200 per kilo for organising their delivery.

This week, Fei He was described in CAB evidence as the leader of a Chinese money-laundering gang and the head of what is known as an ‘International Controller Network’ in Ireland.

Cash was held in a safety deposit box and expensive designer goods bought with money were subsequently exported.

The CAB is targeting 13 individuals involved in what is described as a criminal operation that included buying Prada, Gucci and Burberry bags in Brown Thomas for re-export.

Two junior members of the alleged criminal gang were in court this week, where details of their involvement was declared in affidavits from CAB officers.

During the searches on June 30, 2020, gardaí seized huge sums of cash, including €235,000 in bundles found in a safety deposit box at the Merrion Vaults.

Xiao Xia Zheng, who worked as a nursing assistant and in a chipper, said in court the cash had been sent to buy PPE, while money in her home was from Fei He whose family she had given cash to while he was in prison.

Her partner, Jian Fei Zheng, also appeared at the hearing, who she said “knows nothing about this – he just goes to work and comes home.”

They had claimed the money was from savings having worked for cash and from money sent from China for a shopping system known as ‘deiguo’.

Louis Vuitton bags had been left at her house by people involved in the shopping for people in China and that she had bought bags because the stores limit how many can be purchased by an individual.

In his ruling granting CAB’s application to seize the cash, designer goods and two cars, Judge Alex Owens said the respondents’ resources simply do not match the colossal sums of money going through their accounts.

He said explanations given in Garda interviews were “frankly unbelievable” and the sums involved “all represent one way or another the proceeds of crime.”