How alleged cartel leader Daniel Kinahan returned to Ireland

Law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic believe he is a leading figure in the Kinahan Organised Crime Group.

The gang began as a street drug dealing operation in Dublin in the 1980s. From there, it became an international player in organised crime.

It has been linked to drug trafficking, money laundering, and murder.

The former deputy director of the UK’s National Crime Agency, Roy McComb, said the group had grown globally because it had the “ambition and drive” to do so.

McComb told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the Kinahan group had created links with other organisations from South America, Eastern Europe, Pakistan and Afghanistan, who were involved in the “wholesale distribution” of drugs.

He said the cartel became “the go-to organised crime group to move large quantities of narcotics around Europe”.

McComb explained they were “seen to be a threat to the stability of the US dollar”, because they were trading in the currency.

In 2022, the US offered a reward of $5m (€4.3m; £3.7m) for information about Kinahan, his father Christopher Senior and brother Christopher Junior.

The organisation had previously come to more widespread global media attention in 2016, as the result of a vicious feud with another Irish gang known as the Hutch organisation.

During that year, Kinahan was targeted by gunmen at a boxing weigh-in at a hotel in north Dublin.

Mobile phone footage of the shooting captured the chaos and brutality of the violence.

One man was murdered in that incident. During months of gangland violence, 18 people were killed.

Kinahan left Ireland shortly after the attempt on his life.