US offers $5m reward for information that leads to arrest or conviction of Kinahans

This is a pretty big statement by the US authorities. The net is closing in on the boys in Dubai. This is unprecedented.

"US authorities are offering a $5 million reward for information that leads to the arrest or conviction of three senrior Kinahan members, Chrisry Snr, Daniel or Christopher Jnr, US ambassador to Ireland Claire Cronin told a press event in Dublin.

Irish, American and British law enforcement have launched a major joint action against the Kinahan cartel in a bid to frustrate their criminal and financial international operations.

Speaking at a media conference in Dublin’s City Hall on Wednesday morning, Gada Commissioner Drew Harris described the joint move by the Irish, US, British and European authorities against the Kinahan cartel as a crucial day.

The sanctions and the reward now offer for the conviction of the “apex of the organisation”, as well as travel restrictions being placed on them, was only “the first phase”. The authorities in Northern Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands and Spain were also working with the Irish authorities.

Mr Harris said the Kinahans would be brought to justice, that they would now run low on money and friends, adding: “To them I would say, you can run but you can’t hide from justice for ever.”

The US sanction announced against the three Kinahans and some of their associates represented a “heavy blow if not a crippling blow” to the crime group, he said. It had done so much damage in Ireland and internationally.

It was now a trasnational group that had generated an estimated €1 billion while “leaving addiction and violence in their wake”.

Mr Harris said the Garda had systematically set out degrading and dismantling the ganga’s Irish operation since in the six years since the Regency Hotel attack in Dublin six years ago. However, the leadership of the group was located offshore in jurisdictions without an extradition treaty with Ireland.

The action, which is unprecedented, has been accompanied by the most specific public release of information about cartel members, including their addresses and the numbers of their passports, both genuine and fake.

The Kinahans – Christy snr, Daniel and Christopher jnr – were last night named by the US Department of the Treasury as being at the apex of the criminal network, and sanctions have been put in place against them.

Also named, and sanctioned, are their close associates in the cartel and businesses they have an interest in, including a stake in a major UK-based drinks company that the Americans state was given to Daniel Kinahan to repay him when drugs were seized by law enforcement. Two UAE-based sports companies are also at the centre of the sanctions.

“The Kinahan organised crime group (KOCG) smuggles deadly narcotics, including cocaine, to Europe, and is a threat to the entire licit economy through its role in international money laundering,” said America’s under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Brian E Nelson."