‘rewarding time’ | 

Former NCA investigator says it is the beginning of the end for the Kinahan Cartel

‘It’s not unusual in my trade to accept the fact that you might have lost this particular battle, but the war, if you like, if I can use that metaphor, carries on’

Today at 14:38

One of Britain’s leading criminal investigators has revealed how he believes it is the beginning of the end for the Kinahan Cartel.

Matt Horne, who recently retired as deputy director of investigations at the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), spoke about how the organised crime gang is coming under increasing pressure.

Horne first became aware of the Kinahans when he joined the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, SOCA, the predecessor to the NCA, in 2006.

At that time he said the information they were working on and developing intelligence around was the Kinahan’s potential involvement in drugs trafficking, firearms and money laundering.

“The assessment that we were making at the time was that they really were at the top of the tree, rubbing shoulders with really the highest level criminals from other countries doing similar things,” he told Miles Johnson on the Financial Times podcast Hot Money.

“You’ve got this extreme violence taking place, this criminal vendetta that’s going on for a long period of time, shootings, murders.

“You’ve got this sports washing, they’re kind of infiltrating effectively a global sport and becoming a major player in a global sport as organised criminals, you’ve got the major money laundering, you’ve got the huge involvement in the global drug trade.

“So yeah, you are starting to think, this is a major group and a group that we still need to do something about and we’ve not managed to successfully prosecute them so far. So what else can we do to try and disrupt them?”

According to police documents, Christy Kinahan Snr had been moving large loads of cocaine through Europe and was “raking in more money than ever before” listeners were told.

There are Spanish police reports from the time that offer fascinating insight into Christy Snr’s criminal mind, as the podcast reveals he started to come up with various creative schemes, including one that involves buying up bits of chicken and pork in Europe and selling them at a profit in China.

Then once his own money laundering operations are up and running, he starts to offer the service to other criminals.

But while the ‘Dapper Don’ is growing his operations, the police in Spain, Ireland and the UK, are watching and doing the sort of painstaking work that’s needed in these kinds of complex cross border investigations.

Horne reveals how “it takes a lot of time” for investigators going after the higher level people.

“You’re following them around, you’re gathering all sorts of data and intelligence and information around them,” he says.

“Doesn’t sound like the most exciting part of it, managing the data and the information. But that’s the thing that when you get to court, it’s going to undermine you if you haven’t done it properly. Because you’re up against people who are highly funded, extremely motivated, very experienced in their trade craft as organised criminals.

“By the time you’ve got one of these high level players before the court, you’ve generally got extremely damning evidence. But what they will do is employ these very high powered, very expensive, and very smart and intelligent barristers to try and attack the integrity of how you did the investigation.

Horne agrees with Johnson’s assessment that it “sounds like a chess match” with investigators thinking multiple stages ahead.

“There were teams that I was working with that were carrying out activity in the UK, carrying out searches and recovering evidence,” Horne revealed.

“You know, obviously very closely in touch with what was happening on the continent so that everything was synchronised and happened, you know, at the same time.

“If you’re running the UK part of this investigation, this is part of the culmination of that really, when your international partners are going to arrest the top echelon of the crime group.”

Johnson refers to Operation Shovel, the multinational operation that saw around 30 cartel associates arrested in Spain, Ireland and the UK in 2010.

As part of the operation, Kinahan Snr, who was named as a leader of the Kinahan Organised Crime Group along with his two sons in April by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, was arrested and accused of using a false passport for a flight to Brazil.

The operation revealed a crime empire described as on a “mind-boggling scale” involving a network of accountants, phony corporate directors and advisors “which make up the Kinahan’s money laundering machine”.

The UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency called it a “global investment service” for gangsters, although Horne agrees that there is a mountain of evidence growing against the Kinahan organisation that is enough to put them behind bars for decades.

Referring to previous video footage of Christy Kinahan being led away by Spanish police handcuffs, Horne says there is a “sense when you become aware and see that sort of footage, this feels like a big stage”.

He adds: “This could be the beginning of the end for the organised crime group.

“It’s a rewarding time I suppose if you’re an investigator and you’re part of a global investigation to see the top end of the organised crime group in handcuffs, being led out by armed Spanish officers. But, of course, you can never really know what’s going to happen until the dice stop rolling if you like.”

However, he adds: “It’s not unusual in my trade to accept the fact that you might have lost this particular battle, but the war, if you like, if I can use that metaphor, carries on.”