Kinahans Seek Sanctuary in Russia by Providing Smuggling Routes & Co-Financed Cocaine Shipments

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

By Nicola Tallant in Sunday World

Christy Kinahan Sr and his son Daniel are playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette, placing their faith in Vladimir Putin as the Irish Government makes moves to bring them home to face charges.

With their futures in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) looking increasingly bleak, the Kinahan Cartel chiefs have become bed-fellows with the Russian and Iranian regimes – offering up their transport routes and South American cocaine suppliers in exchange for sanctuary.

Sources say the Kinahans are actively trying to move money into the Russian economy to secure their future in Putin’s homeland, a final sanctuary from Europe and the US, who have joined forces to eliminate them.

Security sources say Christy Kinahan and his son Daniel are so deeply embedded with both regimes that they are now enemies of the Western World.

In the week that Justice Minister Helen McEntee sought approval to begin the process of setting up an extradition agreement with Dubai, Sunday World can reveal that the Kinahan family is now totally embedded as fixers for both Russia and Iran as they move cocaine across the globe to bolster their financial power.

It’s now a race against the clock as Ireland’s Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) plays a key role in a global effort to remove the Kinahans from a black-hearted triangle of terror between cocaine cartels and forces in Russia and Iran intent on destroying the West.

Both father and son have been conducting high-level meetings in Dubai and are actively moving tons of cocaine across the globe on behalf of the mafia [sanctioned] states, who have been exploiting their transport routes and contacts as they raise funds to fight their wars.

Agents within the Soviet Military Intelligence Wing, the GRU, are understood to play a coordinating and supervisory role in the transport of cocaine which is facilitated by the Kinahan organization.

Christy Sr., Christy Jr. and Daniel Kinahan

The Kinahan organization has now been definitively linked to the 2 tons of cocaine seized from the MV Matthew earlier this year, shipped from the Venezuelan coastline to Guyana before she sailed northwest across the Atlantic.

The cargo ship entered Irish waters last September – after slowing off the Canary Islands – and headed towards Belfast, only to turn back towards Cork where it was eventually apprehended by the Irish Navy and the Army’s Ranger Wing.

Black Cash

According to intelligence experts, the GRU is increasingly using organized criminal figures as a covert tool for the “dark aspects” of its foreign policy.

According to a report on the Russia Matters new site, Russian involvement in drug trafficking allows the GRU to generate ‘chernaya kassa (Black Cash)’ with no provable connection to the Russian state, but helpful in paying for some of its projects.

Criminal money-laundering networks can also be used to “clean” intelligence agencies’ operational funds to allow them to operate in Western countries. For years, the GRU had used a Syrian drug lord based in Marbella, Monzer Al-Kassar, as an arms and cocaine dealer to supply both them and Iran.

The UAE froze all assets belonging to the key members of the Kinahan cartel following the sanctions.

Social Media Praise of Putin

Christy Kinahan Sr had actively supported Putin and the Russian regime on social media sites as he hid in the shadows, posing as an ‘aviation boss’ before US sanctions were leveled against him.

At that time, Kinahan Sr had been moonlighting as an aviation broker and running social media accounts, including one on LinkedIn where he supported pro-Russian propaganda. Among his many enemies he wrote about were ‘mainstream media and US President Joe Biden and his son Hunter’, while he held out Putin as a shining light for the world.

In an X posting under the handle of @CVBizbroker, the ‘Dapper Don’ wrote: “I must say that Vladimir Putin puts up an absolutely compelling and coherent argument. It hasn’t changed would be that some of our leaders would show themselves to be erudite and well educated in #statecraft #Russia #Ukraine #nato.”

His company, CVK-investments, had previously announced a joint venture with a Malawian business to operate an air ambulance service which it was suspected was to be used to move drugs up through Africa. He regularly posted conspiracy theories about Joe Biden’s son Hunter, as well as fringe theories on the Ukrainian war and media ‘disinformation’.

The depth of the links between the Kinahan father and son and the Russian regime has intensified in the past year as they race to shore up their debts and assets and move them into protected regions including Kish Island off Iran and directly into Russia.

Sources say they are now operating as ‘puppets’ for Putin in a desperate attempt to hold on to power and find a country to take them as they come under increasing pressure in the UAE.

Irish authorities are confident that they can bring charges against the pair and others involved in the top command with hefty files already with the DPP for consideration.

Commissioner Drew Harris recently visited Dubai police while Justice Chief McEntee is now constructing a roadmap to extradition for the Cartel bosses and their cohorts. The international effort against the Kinahans has entered its final stages as they embed themselves ever further with Russian and Iranian warlords.

However, they have picked treacherous masters to pin their future to and it is believed that they are only in favor as long as their transport routes are of use.

Russian Connections

The seizure of the MV Matthew, along with increased intelligence-led operations against their shipments, has piled pressure on the Kinahans to bring in the money.

The links with sinister Russian security personnel go right back to the Kinahans’ rise to prominence in Marbella, Spain where they joined with the ruthless Dutch Mocro Maffia.

The Kinahan organization has been participating in drug deliveries with the GRU since at least 2019 and was recently linked to 9.5 tons of cocaine found by the Cape Verdean police on a ship manned by Russian sailors. Kinahan purchases the drugs in South America on behalf of Russian operatives and ships them to Europe, while they in turn help him launder money and also supply him with weapons.

Artem Kruglov, editor of the website putinism.wordpress.com, has claimed that the personal bodyguards of the Kinahan father and son are veterans of the Russian special forces.

Dutch gangster "Buik" coordinated the assassination of an Iranian dissident, he was arrested in Ireland in a Kinahan safehouse.

Iranian Assassination

In the Netherlands in 2015 an Iranian political refugee who was living undercover was killed. Ali Motamed was involved in a bomb attack in the early 1980s that killed dozens of people including members of the Iranian regime.

It is suspected that the regime was behind his murder and that the killers were instructed by Naoufal "Buik" Fassih, one of the henchmen of the notorious Ridouan Taghi. An attempt on Fassih's life occurred in Berlin, Germany that same year when men entered the country with 3 AK-47 rifles and encrypted phones but failed to track him down. Fassih was arrested in a Kinahan safe house in Dublin in April 2016 while hiding out in Ireland.

At one point while on the run, Taghi was understood to have been in hiding in Kish off the coast of Iran. A Hauge official pleaded guilty to supplying 22 false passports to criminals including Taghi and Fassih.

Robert Mink Kok, a Kinahan associate, was based in Lebanon importing cocaine to the EU and laundering money through Hawalah.

Hezbollah Cocaine History

European and American investigators came together to probe the tie between the new cocaine godfathers and the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) to import tons of cocaine into EU ports and transfer the proceeds through the Hawala networks.

Connections to that system were made through Robert Mink Kok, who ran the drug trade from Beirut for years and who was a firm associate of Christy Kinahan Sr, Raffaele Imperiale, and Ridouan Taghi.

His brother-in-law, Lebanese Ali Koleitat Dali, was extradited to the US in 2014 and accused of being head of a network founded by Hezbollah leaders to import cocaine and launder the proceeds.

“The connections between drug trafficking, money laundering, and terrorism financing processes are visible at various latitudes; from Latin America to the Middle East, from Pakistan to Afghanistan to the Balkans, from Libya to Western and Sub-Saharan Africa.”

Source Sunday World, Sunday World