0:15

Pushkin.

0:18

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0:23

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0:41

only available on iOS. There's a

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link in the show notes. Previously

0:48

on Hot Money, Daniel Kinahan

0:50

took over the family business, launched

0:52

his career as a boxing promoter, and

0:54

waged a bloody war on the streets of Dublin.

0:57

Europe was no longer safe for him.

1:01

Back in twenty twenty one, I was working for the

1:03

FT as a foreign correspondent in Italy. One

1:06

morning I noticed this story that was causing

1:09

a bit of a stir. One

1:11

of it to Lea's most wanted Fugitives.

1:14

This guy on the run.

1:15

He'd given an interview to a local Naples

1:17

newspaper and his name was Rafaela

1:20

Imperiale. This

1:23

interview, it was a pretty audacious move because

1:25

at the time he was wanted on drug trafficking

1:27

charges and was thought to be tied to the Neapolitan

1:30

Camora mafia and Imperial

1:32

le He looked like this classic mob character.

1:35

He wore finally tailored clothes and expensive

1:38

leather shoes. But the thing that really

1:40

grabbed my attention was his nickname,

1:43

the Van Goff Boss. That's

1:45

Van go if you're listening in the US, but Van

1:47

Goboss doesn't really sound as good. It

1:50

came from a story that began in two thousand

1:52

and two when these criminals sledge

1:54

hammered their way into the Van goth Museum in

1:56

Amsterdam in the middle of the night. In

1:59

less than five minutes, they lifted

2:01

two priceless paintings off the walls, ab

2:03

sailed down the building and disappeared

2:05

into the night. The robbery

2:07

made headlines around the world and was

2:09

listed by the FBI as one of the most notable

2:12

art thefts of the twenty first century. The

2:15

thieves they were eventually caught,

2:17

but the paintings were long gone. They

2:19

were sold to an unknown buyer, and for years

2:22

no one knew where the Van Goffs could be. And

2:25

then in twenty sixteen, an

2:28

Italian public prosecutor got a letter.

2:31

It was from Raphaeli Imperiale, he

2:33

was by then living on the run in Dubai.

2:36

Imperiale told the Italians that

2:38

he was the guy who bought the stole a Van Goffs,

2:41

and he was willing to come back and face the

2:43

charges against him, but he wanted to trade

2:46

the paintings in for a lighter sentence.

2:48

It didn't work out.

2:50

The Italians weren't interested, and soon

2:52

enough the police raided a property outside of Naples

2:55

and recovered the paintings.

2:59

That interview with Imperiale, a

3:01

lot of it was about the Van Goffs.

3:03

What could a mobster know about art? He was

3:05

asked, was he aware about

3:07

how valuable?

3:08

They were?

3:09

Seemed to slightly annoy him. He

3:12

tells the interviewer that he's a man of culture

3:14

and refined taste, and that he was

3:16

raised to appreciate fine painting. I'd

3:19

never seen anything like it before. If

3:21

the most wanted man in Italy was freely

3:24

giving interviews, why hadn't the police

3:26

caught him yet? But what

3:28

I hadn't grasped was that imperial

3:30

had become a sort of trailblazer. He

3:33

was a guy who spotted a big opportunity

3:35

in the middle East before everyone else, because

3:38

around the same time that the police seized his stolen

3:40

Van Goffs, the top drug traffickers

3:42

from around Europe were looking out for a

3:45

new safe place to base their operations,

3:48

and they settled on the same city the Imperiale,

3:51

the Van Goff boss had chosen back

3:53

in twenty ten, the tiny Gulf

3:55

Emirate of Dubai. Imperiale

3:58

had seen that Dubai was a dream location

4:01

for a man like him, and soon the

4:03

Kinnahans and other top bosses in Europe

4:06

would be following him out to the Middle East

4:09

alone. Each of these men were ruthless

4:12

and cunning operators, but once

4:14

they're all together in Dubai,

4:16

they begin to pull their resources.

4:19

They came to realize that by forming a new.

4:21

Type of criminal group, they could become

4:23

richer, more powerful, and

4:25

more feared.

4:26

Than their wildest dreams.

4:28

They were about to transform organized

4:30

crime in Europe and create the

4:32

supercartel. I'm

4:38

Miles Johnson and from the Financial Times

4:41

and Pushkin Industries.

4:42

This is Hot Money Season two.

4:44

The New Narcos episode

4:47

four, Gangster's Paradise.

5:09

See Dubai as a

5:11

bit of a combination between Manhattan,

5:15

Miami, and Beverly Hills.

5:18

Matthew Page used to work for the US government

5:21

in several three letter agencies. Now

5:24

he's an analyst and a author who studies corruption

5:26

and kleptocracy at the Carnegie Endowment.

5:29

He co edited a report on Dubai

5:31

that helped me understand why people like

5:33

Raphaeli Imperiale love living

5:35

there. Matthew says, Dubai

5:38

first of all, is a bit like Manhattan.

5:41

Right, you know, Manhattan, because it's got

5:43

that sort of elite skyscraper

5:45

type of feel to it. Beverly

5:48

Hills sort of that conspicuous consumption,

5:50

the bling, the if

5:53

it wasn't so hot, they'd have furs, but they certainly

5:55

have the Bentleys and hate

5:58

couture. And then also Miami

6:00

because of the climate, the beaches,

6:03

the beautiful people.

6:05

In that newspaper interview, imperial says

6:07

his life in Dubai is nothing fancy.

6:10

But I've got hold of an Italian police file on

6:12

him that tells a different story. It's

6:15

based on wire taps, informant testimony,

6:18

financial documents, and information

6:20

shared by police around the world. It

6:22

paints his portrait of him strutting

6:24

around Dubai wearing expensive suits,

6:27

tailored in his native Naples and always

6:29

trailed by three bodyguards. Dubai

6:32

is somewhere he can flash his cash in the company

6:34

of other wealthy people who are doing exactly

6:36

the same thing. There are pictures

6:38

in a high end restaurant with his much younger

6:40

girlfriend draping her arms around him,

6:43

and he's wearing an open net white shirt and

6:45

a smart jacket. It's got selfies

6:47

he took at the gym, flexing his muscles. He

6:50

drives custom made supercars with conspicuous

6:52

two letter license plates, and he's also

6:55

developed an expensive diamond habit. He

6:57

buys jewelry for his girlfriends at the Graph

6:59

Jewelry Store and jokes to his friends

7:01

that he has a motto, no Graph,

7:04

no Love. For a while,

7:06

he lives in the Burgeo Larrab, the luxury

7:09

hotel where Daniel Kinahan will soon

7:11

celebrate his wedding. The Italian

7:13

press report that he and his entourage

7:15

are often found at a club called Provocateur

7:18

inside Dubai's Four Seasons hotel.

7:21

It's his sort of place.

7:22

It's guest list only, with leather seats,

7:24

bottle service, and a huge custom

7:27

seeding light that looks like a giant diamond

7:30

and Imperiale has this reputation as a

7:32

lavish spender. He buys dozens of

7:34

bottles of crystal at thousands of

7:36

dollars and then picks up the entire tab

7:38

and leaves a very generous tip.

7:41

But it's not just a great place to party.

7:43

It's also a fantastic place for him to

7:45

do business, because in Dubai,

7:48

alongside the beautiful people and

7:50

the very rich, and the powerful

7:52

and the dangerous. Someone

7:55

once told me that the best way to describe

7:57

Dubai is sort of like a bling

7:59

version of the Cantina and Star Wars,

8:02

full of these strange and shadowy characters

8:04

from around the world. You have

8:06

hedge fund managers and professional athletes

8:09

drinking at the same bars as Russian oligarchs

8:11

and cocaine kingpins.

8:14

It could be an Afghan warlord

8:16

who has taken

8:19

all the money that he made during the

8:21

Karzai regime and now that the Taliban

8:24

is back in control, kind of can't go

8:26

back to the fiefdom that he

8:28

once ruled. The Instagram

8:31

influencer who makes their

8:33

living taking pictures of themselves on

8:35

fabulous yachts. It could

8:37

be the sort of nerdy but indispensable

8:41

sort of pasty British accountant who

8:43

provides the services that these

8:45

individuals need and legitimizes

8:48

them. It could be people like Isabelle

8:50

de Santosch, former head of

8:53

Angola's national oil company

8:56

and whose father was the former president, and

8:58

she's basically on the run from

9:00

international law enforcement. And

9:03

that's not to mention the local elites,

9:05

right the royal family, the ruling family,

9:08

cousins and nephews and grandchildren,

9:10

who are the most powerful people in this in

9:12

this country.

9:13

To understand why Dubai was the perfect

9:16

place for a bunch of international drug lords

9:18

to join forces, you need to know a little bit

9:20

about its history. It's part

9:22

of the United Arab Emirates, a federation

9:24

made up of seven neighboring monarchies. Before

9:27

the UAE gained independence in nineteen

9:29

seventy one, the region was a British

9:31

colony and an important source of oil,

9:34

but the oil belongs to Dubai's Emirti

9:36

neighbor, Abu Dhabi. So when the British

9:38

left and the UAE was born, Dubai

9:40

needed to find ways to diversify its economy.

9:44

And it was really a tiny place

9:46

with just you know, a few tens of thousands

9:49

of people until the nineteen eighties

9:51

nineteen nineties when it saw an explosive

9:55

growth. You know, so the royal family in Dubai

9:57

really had a vision of how to transform the emirate

10:00

by building lots of you know, world

10:02

class infrastructure, you know, power

10:05

roads, airport, seaport.

10:08

And it wasn't just infrastructure.

10:11

The royal family also invested in some of the most

10:13

luxurious real estate in the world. Dubai

10:16

today is now full of skyscrapers

10:18

and gated communities. Some of them

10:20

are built on these artificial sand islands that

10:23

stretch out into the Persian Gulf. If

10:25

you've never seen them before, they're pretty

10:27

surreal. There's one in the shape of a

10:29

palm tree. There's another archipelago

10:31

that replicates a map of the world, and

10:34

they're isolated, which means for

10:36

the rich and the powerful, they feel

10:38

safe. When Imperiale

10:40

moved to Dubai, he starts to make huge

10:42

investments in property, and he doesn't

10:44

settle for anything but the very best.

10:47

He buys the island on the archipelago that's

10:50

shaped like Taiwan, worth an estimated

10:52

eighty million dollars. He

10:55

begins a project to build ten luxury

10:57

villas worth twenty million dollars each, and

11:00

according to a police file, he tried to get

11:02

Zaha Hadid, the critically acclaimed

11:04

architect, to design them, because in

11:06

Dubai he can spend that sort of money without

11:09

too many questions being asked.

11:11

Dubai is like a membrane. It's

11:14

where the sort of brackish

11:17

waters of the underworld

11:20

and the murky waters sort of percolate

11:22

and mingle with the fresh water of

11:24

the rules based international

11:27

financial system, and that really

11:29

captures Dubai in a nutshell. It's a

11:31

place where these different

11:34

flows merge and mix and

11:36

just generally come out cleaner and

11:38

sweeter smelling than they came in.

11:41

But Dubai has also been an island of stability

11:43

in a region that, otherwise from the perspective

11:46

of the West, has been pretty unstable, and

11:48

so in the nineteen nineties, a lot of Western

11:51

banks and other companies they chose Dubai

11:53

as their base in the region.

11:55

But at the same time, its

11:58

own system of rules

12:01

has been kept loose and fungible

12:03

enough to allow the penetration

12:07

of a lot of

12:09

unexplained wealth illicit funds

12:12

into the country and as a result, it's served

12:14

as a magnet for those

12:16

types of funds.

12:18

The fact that there's lots of people who want

12:20

to move there presumably

12:23

that has also resulted in springing

12:26

up of financial and technical

12:29

kind of infrastructure to support people

12:32

bringing money from all around the world.

12:34

Absolutely, so these include you

12:36

know, high end estate agents, you

12:38

know the people who again manage those

12:40

transactions, the accountants,

12:43

the conveyors and so forth. It

12:46

involves lawyers and maybe PR

12:48

consultants as well, and

12:51

people who are essentially functioning as

12:53

wealth managers and helping

12:55

you often

12:57

within the bounds of what is legal,

13:00

avoid tax and

13:03

optimize the wealth

13:06

that you have gained without

13:08

necessarily questioning what the source

13:11

of that wealth is. I

13:13

mean, if you think about it, the international

13:15

financial system is twenty first century

13:18

as it is with you know, contactless

13:20

payment and instant transactions

13:23

around the globe, is still a very sort of almost

13:25

like eighteenth century element to it. You

13:27

know, there's a lot of trust involved. There's a lot

13:29

of essentially taking

13:31

people at their word that the money that they've

13:34

acquired is legitimate.

13:38

In countries either the US or the UK.

13:40

If you suddenly turn up to a bank with a million

13:42

dollars in a suitcase, they might get a

13:44

little twitchy, But in Dubai,

13:47

according to Matthew, very few questions

13:50

asked about where your cash comes from.

13:52

They're just looking for ways essentially

13:55

to take that wealth off you,

13:57

you know, and in exchange for

13:59

a luxury apartment or a high end

14:01

car, or looking to provide

14:03

services to you an

14:05

extraordinarily high net

14:08

worth individual, whether

14:10

you be a Silicon

14:13

Valley you know, multi billionaire who earned

14:15

your money legitimately, or you're

14:17

a drug trafficking kingpin from Europe.

14:20

So there's sort of a whole universe

14:23

of sort of like twenty first century gat spies,

14:25

like people who've sort of come to escape

14:28

their past in a way or at least like sort

14:30

of set up shop, you know,

14:32

as a new type of person with lots

14:34

of money where people don't ask any questions.

14:37

Yeah, and it's a way in which wealth

14:40

can be traded

14:43

or exchanged for elite status. Right,

14:45

places like Oxford and Cambridge

14:48

used to be that for global

14:51

elites one hundred years ago. Right, this

14:53

is the twenty first century answer to that.

14:55

And it's all about conspicuous consumption,

14:58

you know, Instagram selfies and

15:01

an ill gotten wealth.

15:03

But there's another very important part to

15:05

living in Dubai that even the bloodiest

15:08

crime bosses understand.

15:09

You might be.

15:10

Murdering people or shipping industrial

15:12

quantities of drugs somewhere else, but

15:14

you don't commit violent crime in Dubai.

15:17

And that means for a city inhabited

15:20

by some of the scariest men on the planet, it's

15:22

pretty safe. There are very few robberies

15:24

or murders. So why is Imperiale

15:27

always walking around Dubai with bodyguards. Well,

15:30

the thing is he tells his friends

15:32

that his hench men, they're not there to

15:34

protect him, they're there to protect others

15:37

in case he gets angry. Because

15:39

in Dubai you've got to keep your temper

15:41

under control, and if you do that

15:43

then most of the time the authorities

15:46

there they'll leave you alone. At

15:48

the time, Dubai doesn't have extradition agreements

15:50

with a lot of other countries, so even if you

15:52

do get in trouble, it's very

15:55

hard for the police to actually get you, and

15:57

that means for the kinner hands, Dubai

16:00

will be like the Costa del Soul, but even

16:02

better, more luxurious,

16:05

lower risk, and way beyond the reach

16:07

of European law enforcement. So

16:24

Daniel Kinahan arrives in Dubai in

16:26

twenty sixteen, not long after the attempt

16:29

on his life at the Regency Hotel, and

16:31

his family moves there to his father,

16:33

Christie and his brother Christopher Jr.

16:36

Corporate documents and property files

16:39

they show that Christie wasted very little

16:41

time in setting up a bunch of companies, usually

16:43

in the name of Christopher Vincent, leaving

16:46

off to Kinnahan. He reinvents himself

16:48

as a commodities trader and a business consultant.

16:51

He sets up social media accounts for his companies

16:54

and he tweets out news about the

16:56

oil market and.

16:57

Tesla's earning results.

16:58

He even follows the ft on that, and

17:01

he sets up a new LinkedIn under his fake

17:03

identity, and he describes himself

17:05

as an executive with a view to

17:07

expanding my company's and an eye for detail.

17:10

He lists his skills, skills that you

17:13

would.

17:13

Probably expect a crime boss to have, such as

17:15

negotiation and strategic planning.

17:18

And actually many of his top business

17:20

contacts, people like Imperiale

17:23

guys he's known for years through the European cocaine

17:25

market.

17:25

They're all out there with him.

17:27

It's around this time that different police

17:30

forces they start to see that something

17:32

pretty BIG's.

17:32

Happening in Dubai.

17:34

At the start, they only get little snippets

17:36

of meetings and deals. They

17:38

learn that the Kinnahans and Imperiale

17:41

they're spending more time together, and

17:43

other notorious kingpins. They seem

17:45

to be part of the same group. Ridu

17:47

Antargi he shows up in Dubai.

17:50

He's a Dutch Moroccan crime boss who's linked

17:52

to multiple murders. There's also

17:54

a Chilean called Richard roquelme Vega.

17:56

He's nicknamed El Rico or the

17:58

rich guy under

18:00

the Giant diamond in provocateur in

18:03

five star restaurants and high end hotels.

18:06

These gangsters they start to form

18:08

a sort of consortium. It's a powerful

18:10

new alliance and European police.

18:13

They believe that by twenty seventeen,

18:15

they've seized control of a third of the continent's

18:18

cocaine market. That's a business

18:20

worth billions of dollars a year, and

18:22

that's how they earn the name the

18:25

Supercartel.

18:28

Like any criminal conspiracy, it's

18:30

not easy to get a clear picture of

18:32

how it works. I've tried to piece

18:34

it together a sort of tapestry

18:36

of information. But the documents

18:39

I've got they're based on hundreds of pages

18:41

of shared intelligence from various law enforcement

18:44

agencies, and they do a pretty good

18:46

job of sketching out how the Supercartel

18:48

operates. It calls

18:50

them partners in a sort of holding

18:53

company for international cocaine trafficking,

18:55

and that holding company it works

18:58

on a few simple but powerful

19:00

economic principles. The most

19:02

important thing is market power.

19:05

This new consortium it's based out

19:07

of Dubai, but it has a global reach that

19:09

stretches across Europe, Africa

19:12

and Latin America. And by being

19:14

bigger, the Supercartel can buy

19:16

cocaine in larger quantities at

19:18

lower prices, they can spread their

19:20

risk. The file says

19:23

that they work to form joint ventures with Colombian

19:25

cartels to quote control the

19:27

trafficking of cocaine from South America

19:30

into the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp.

19:32

They share the same transport routes and

19:35

they start to pull their cash. The

19:37

aim is to quote maintain control

19:40

of the supply channels because that

19:42

gives them bigger market share in Europe and

19:44

a better ability to set prices. And

19:47

the cartel starts to establish economic

19:49

co interests. They're laundering

19:51

their money together and they're investing it in

19:53

countries around the world. The

19:55

file also has these remarkably detailed examples

19:58

of the logistical complexity of these operations.

20:01

They're not only using ports, they

20:03

send drugs, money, and guns

20:06

through fleets of articulated lorries

20:08

leaving the nether to travel across Europe.

20:11

And they're these photos sent between Imperially

20:14

and his crew of huge shipments

20:16

of cocaine sitting in a warehouse.

20:18

They're on industrial palettes.

20:20

In this case, it's being sent to Sydney, Australia

20:23

in a shipping container disguised as Italian

20:25

natural stone. On another

20:28

occasion, Imperially arranges for

20:30

a truck filled with several million euros

20:32

to be sent to a fellow supercartel member's

20:34

son in the Netherlands. So

20:37

this is starting to look quite a lot like the way

20:39

you'd structure a multinational trading company.

20:42

You've got equity partners pulling

20:44

their resources and spreading their risk, and

20:47

they use their scale to get cheaper prices

20:49

and lower distribution costs and

20:52

profit margins.

20:53

They go up.

20:54

Business is booming, and all

20:56

of them are making more money than ever before.

21:00

But for Daniel Kinahan, quietly

21:02

growing his business, it's not enough

21:05

because he wants his reputation to grow

21:07

not as a drug trafficker but as a

21:10

global sports tycoon. And

21:13

this next bit of the story it shows

21:15

just how fuzzy the lines have become between

21:17

gangster, online influencer

21:20

and entrepreneur. Today,

21:24

Tyson Fury is one of the best known boxers

21:26

on the planet. He's outspoken

21:28

and funny, and recently he was given

21:30

the ultimate badge of fame.

21:32

I Say his own reality

21:34

TV.

21:34

Show on Netflix, following

21:37

him his wife Paris and their six.

21:38

Children living in the busy household, three

21:41

girls, Throny Ball's small wife, all freaking

21:43

crazy.

21:45

Before he met Kinnahan, Fury had some

21:47

major success in twenty fifty.

21:49

He defied the odds to beat.

21:51

Ukraine's Vladimir Klitschko in a match

21:53

broadcast by Sky Sports.

21:55

I've got everything in the gym for this and i just can't

21:57

believe it, and I've got.

21:58

It, so Fury's credit. It is genuinely

22:00

one of the best wins that British

22:03

boxer has ever done. It wasn't in England,

22:05

it was a win on foreign soil, and it was

22:07

against a guy who hadn't been beaten for

22:09

more than a decade. But after

22:11

that win, Tyson Fury's

22:14

life just spiraled.

22:15

This is boxing journalist Alan Dawson.

22:18

He tested positive for the banned substance

22:20

in andrelone, and by his own admission,

22:22

he was using cocaine and drinking

22:24

tequila in the morning.

22:26

By twenty seventeen, Tyson

22:28

Fury's down and out. He

22:31

later talked about this period of his life on Joe Rogan's

22:33

podcast.

22:34

I'd wake up and I think, why did I wake up this morning?

22:36

This is coming from a mom who had everything, money,

22:38

fame, glory, titles, a

22:41

wife, a family, kids, everything. Well,

22:43

I felt as if I had nothing. I felt there was an empty

22:46

gape in hole.

22:48

So Kinahan entered his life at this

22:50

point.

22:52

When Daniel Kinahan was in Spain, he picked

22:54

up promising young boxers, paying for the best

22:56

trainers and the best equipment.

22:58

But that's not what Fury needs.

23:00

And it's kind of unclear what specifically Kinahan

23:03

did for Fury, But for

23:05

Ben Davison, who was Tyson Fury's coach

23:07

at the time, it was simply a belief in him.

23:10

It's a theme I've observed in Kinnahan

23:13

where he tends to enter people's lives when they're at

23:15

their lowest step, and I kind of see that in quite

23:17

a predatory way.

23:19

In twenty seventeen, Tyson Fury

23:21

posts a selfie on Twitter. He and Daniel

23:24

Kinahan are sitting next to each other, both wearing

23:26

colorful shirts.

23:27

They look relaxed.

23:28

They're grinning, arms around each other's

23:31

shoulders, giving the camera a thumbs up.

23:33

They look like best friends. It's

23:35

a classic story, the fallen

23:38

champion on the ropes, needing to relaunch

23:40

their career. Tyson Fury

23:42

doesn't have any connection to crime, but

23:44

just like that, one of the world's most famous

23:47

boxers has a new advisor,

23:49

Daniel Kinahan. Fury

23:52

is clearly one of the most talented, the most

23:54

talented boxer of his generation,

23:56

at least bristboxer.

23:57

You know, he's clearly like a huge figure in the sport. But

24:00

what does it do for Kinnahan.

24:02

What does signing up a boxer like

24:04

Tyson Fury do for this seemingly

24:06

fairly small, low level

24:10

figure in boxing.

24:11

It completely legitimizes him in boxing.

24:14

He's in the ear of the number one

24:16

heavyweight in boxing. Yeah,

24:19

that was really the beginning for Daniel

24:21

Knahan to become one of probably

24:24

the top three most powerful figures

24:26

in the entire sport.

24:29

Through Daniel's friendship with Tyson Fury,

24:31

a whole new world of celebrity and fame

24:33

is opening up. So in twenty

24:36

seventeen, he's at the top of his game.

24:38

He's rich, and he's feared, and

24:41

he's about to get married. There's a huge

24:43

moment in anyone's life.

24:46

The venue for the big day is the Burj

24:48

Al Arab, arguably the most

24:50

luxurious hotel in the entire Middle East

24:52

and easily one of the most expensive in the world.

24:55

It's all about as far from inner city Dublin

24:58

as you could be. His fiance,

25:00

the woman by his side as he builds his family's

25:03

empire in the Middle East.

25:04

She comes from much closer to home.

25:07

Daniel's bride to be was born close to

25:09

where he grew up and for Nicola

25:11

Talon, the Irish crime reporter that we heard

25:13

from last time, his choice

25:15

of partner gives us an important insight

25:17

into Daniel's character.

25:20

I see it is amazing

25:22

that he has traveled the world. He has

25:25

mixed with people both

25:28

in you know, organized crime

25:30

and at the highest end of boxing.

25:33

He has followed his father's

25:35

footsteps, first to the Costa

25:38

del Salon, then to Dubai. Daniel

25:40

Kinahan had to come back to

25:42

Dublin to find a wife and

25:45

his brother is the same.

25:46

What does that tell us about that, well,

25:48

about Daniel Kinahan.

25:50

I just think that and maybe you'd

25:52

need a psychologist

25:54

who could explain this sort of stuff

25:56

to you. But you know, has

25:58

he got deep underlying insecurities there?

26:02

Has he lived a pretense

26:05

as he always aspired

26:07

to be his father and at the same time he

26:09

has those narcissistic tendencies. You

26:12

know, does your world get smaller the

26:14

richer you get. You know, maybe you do have to

26:16

go back to the to the original

26:19

circle to find somebody that you trust. But

26:22

I think it probably has more to do with his

26:25

insecurities. He's always had a craving

26:27

for.

26:27

Home and maybe that's

26:30

why, well, he's getting ready to enter a new

26:32

phase of his life, Daniel just

26:34

can't let go of old grudges.

26:53

On the streets of north

26:56

inner city Dublin, we had

26:58

armed patrons where our

27:01

emergency response unit were

27:03

seen along with those members

27:06

of the Girls she con it I would normally walk

27:08

the beat and they were there to protect

27:10

their lives, primarily of

27:13

those who we knew to be targets

27:15

of the Kinahan organized crime group. So

27:17

there was a huge element of fear within

27:20

the community.

27:21

Well, Daniel Kinahan establishes himself

27:23

in his new home back in Dublin.

27:26

John O'Driscoll has just taken up a new role

27:28

as the Assistant Commissioner in charge of Serious

27:30

Organized Crime and his first job

27:33

is to try and contain the gang war that's

27:35

broken out after the attempt on Daniel's

27:37

life. A year after the

27:39

shooting at the Regency hotel, the

27:41

violence was still raging. There's

27:44

this grim contrast between the Kinnahan's

27:46

luxury life in Dubai and the brutality

27:49

that they're orchestrating thousands of miles away

27:51

in Ireland.

27:52

How is it even.

27:53

Possible to be ordering murders in a European

27:55

capital with impunity. There's

27:58

only one thing on John's mind, stopping

28:01

the Kinnahans.

28:02

Perhaps, if they

28:05

hadn't engaged in the

28:07

murderous activity that emerged

28:10

after the Regency, they

28:12

may have escaped

28:15

the level of focus that was placed on

28:17

them.

28:18

While Daniel Kinahan is making decisions

28:21

about his wedding, choosing the flowers,

28:23

the wine list, the music, deciding

28:26

on the menu.

28:27

He's also planning something else.

28:30

Three months before Daniel's wedding is due to take

28:32

place, an Estonian man in his late

28:34

fifties lands in Dublin.

28:37

Unbelievably. This man he's

28:39

known as the Butcher.

28:41

He's got a reputation as a ruthless

28:43

professional, a man who for the right

28:45

amount of money, he'll get the job

28:47

done. So Daniel, in

28:49

between picking out the final details for his wedding,

28:52

he gets in touch, but

28:54

the Irish police are prepared. They

28:56

follow the Butcher from the moment he lands in Dublin

29:00

and soon it becomes clear to them he's in

29:02

Ireland working for the Kinahans.

29:04

And within a couple of

29:06

hours had been apprehended.

29:09

Gard to Chicana and on entering

29:11

a particular premises, was found to be

29:13

in contact with people believed

29:16

to be based in Dubai, where

29:19

instructions in relation to a murder that

29:21

was to be undertaken

29:24

were being discussed.

29:27

That person was convicted, so

29:30

the contract killing fails. It's

29:33

a blow, but Daniel doesn't have

29:35

time to dwell. One

29:37

of the most important aspects of planning any wedding

29:40

is the seating plan. Awkward

29:42

cousins need to be spaced out, doting

29:44

aunts made to feel important, and

29:47

for Daniel's wedding, picking the right seating

29:49

plan is going to be more delicate than usual because

29:52

among the guests scheduled to attend some

29:54

of the most powerful crime bosses on the planet.

29:57

Raphaeli Imperiale is one of the names

29:59

on the guest lists. Another it's

30:02

really Antargi, the murderous Dutch

30:04

crime lord. And there's Richard

30:06

Vega el Rico, the Dutch

30:08

Chilean drug trafficker. Each

30:11

of them they're known to their police in their home countries.

30:14

Some are already on the run. But

30:17

Daniel, he succeeds in keeping the wedding

30:19

quiet. There's no pictures on social

30:21

media. Nikola Tallon

30:23

picks up some details from her sources.

30:26

I'm going to say seventeen tiied wedding cake.

30:28

It was in the ballroom of the place. There

30:30

was thrones for him and her.

30:33

One way to get a glimpse into the luxury of

30:35

a wedding at the Burj al Aram. It's from photos

30:37

and videos that other happy couples have shared online.

30:41

The ballroom is circular and

30:43

dripping with gold paint. A vast chandelier

30:46

hangs from the domed ceiling. The

30:48

waiting staff they're dressed in tails,

30:51

and there are flowers everywhere, vases

30:53

and arches of them, bouquets hanging

30:55

over every table. There's also

30:57

an outside space, a terrace that

31:00

feels private, jutting out into the

31:02

Persian Gulf. In the

31:04

pictures I've seen, the water gives

31:06

this scene of feeling of peace and calm.

31:09

And I wonder if Daniel Kinahan was feeling calm

31:12

that day as he juggled the competing demands

31:14

of cousins from back home with some of

31:16

the most wanted and dangerous criminal master minds,

31:19

because he might have been too busy to notice

31:22

that somebody there was paying particularly

31:24

close attention to the details of the day. One

31:28

of the guests is an informant, and

31:30

later they'll share their account of the wedding

31:33

with Western law enforcement. It's

31:35

not long before the information reaches

31:37

John O'Driscoll. Do you

31:39

remember when you learned about the wedding,

31:42

Daniel Canahan's wedding in Dubai and what did

31:44

that make you feel when you learn about that.

31:46

To see Kinahan's at

31:49

that table and perhaps even being

31:52

looked upon as performing some sort

31:54

of leadership role, it

31:57

illustrated beyond any doubt that

31:59

no one law enforcement entity could

32:01

achieve any realistic success

32:05

on its own entackling one

32:07

of these criminal enterprises to

32:09

loan a scenario where they were

32:11

cooperating together.

32:13

For John O'Driscoll, the message from the

32:15

wedding is clear. He knows that he and

32:18

the Irish police they can't tackle the

32:20

kin Hands on their own. They're going to have to

32:22

work with partners in other law enforcement agencies.

32:25

And John realizes something else. Seizing

32:28

drugs or convicting their associates,

32:31

they're just short term measures to really

32:33

bring the kin Hands down.

32:35

He's going to have to focus on something else.

32:37

Money is the motive for getting involved in crime,

32:40

and whatever tactics law

32:43

enforcement used to tackle organized

32:45

crime. Until such time as you

32:48

tackle effectively the motive

32:50

involved, you're not going to achieve

32:52

the dismantling of an organization.

32:55

John starts working on a plan. It's

32:58

going to take a few years for it to come to fruition.

33:01

But at the same time, elsewhere

33:03

in Europe, police are close to cracking

33:05

an important code, a code

33:07

that will take them one step close to bringing

33:09

down the Supercartel and solving

33:12

the murder of the electrician in Almair.

33:14

So in Then Netherlands.

33:16

The panics within Organized

33:18

Crime group started.

33:20

On that day.

33:22

That's next time on Hot Money.

33:34

Hot Money is a production of The Financial Times

33:37

and Pushkin Industries. It was written

33:39

and reported by me Myles Johnson and

33:41

if you've got any leads or information about this story,

33:43

you can email me at new narcost

33:46

ft dot com. The series

33:48

producer is Peggy Sutton. Edith

33:50

Russello is the associate producer. Fact

33:53

checking is by Arthur Gompertz, Engineering

33:56

by Sarah Bruguer, sound design

33:58

from Jake Gorsky. Jeremy Warmsley

34:01

wrote the original music. Our editor

34:03

is Sarah Nix and the executive

34:05

producers are Jacob Goldstein and Cheryl

34:07

Brumley. Special thanks

34:10

to Laura Clark, Alastair Mackie and Green

34:12

Tunner