Leaving Cert fail, first crime & explosive 17-year revenge wait truth…how Christy Kinahan built world’s most wanted gang

CARTEL kingpin Christy Kinahan is one of Ireland’s most infamous names in international crime.

The drug lord has become known as one of our most nefarious mobsters to emerge from the Irish capital – and he reached the summit of the criminal underworld by exploiting self-help books.

ICIJInternational drug lord Christopher Kinahan Sr[/caption]

Christy in his younger days in 1987

UnknownA US wanted poster for Christy[/caption]

The mob boss used his positive qualities of self-learning and intelligence for evil – focusing on furthering his own goals for money and power.

In that vein, he forged the Kinahan Organised Crime Group from lowly beginnings on Dublin’s streets to the forefront of crime in Europe and further abroad.

But how did a young forger from a middle-class family in Dublin – who failed his Leaving Cert – become one of the world’s most notorious criminals?

Here, we outline the early life and crimes of the head of the Kinahan mob gang.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Christy Kinahan Senior, now 68, is believed to have been born in 1957 and lived in St Teresa’s Gardens, in south inner city Dublin.

However, one seized passport of his claims he was born in west London that same year, on March 23, while another states his place of birth as Cabra in Dublin.

His mother ran a bed and breakfast, while his father was a dairy farm manager. He also has three sisters – Denise, Maria and Sally Anne. None of these family members have, or had, any involvement in crime.

Starting out, Christy became a fraudster and a ‘fixer’ for gangs in Dublin, but his first major foray into drugs came in 1986.

While he had come to the attention of cops in the late 1970s for burglary, car theft, forgery and other relatively minor offences, Christy was nabbed over a £117,000 heroin seizure in Marino, Dublin in 1986.

In 2023, The Irish Sun’s podcast The Kinahans charted Christy’s career from low-level criminality to ruthless and deadly mob boss.

In the first episode, former Garda Assistant Commissioner Michael O’Sullivan, recalls how Christy began preying on Dublin’s vulnerable drug users at the height of the city’s heroin epidemic in the 1980s.

Following in the footsteps of notorious heroin peddler Larry Dunne, Christy set himself up in Fairview, in a quiet apartment block, which he used as an operation centre for distributing the killer drug.

But his early efforts came to a sudden halt on September 14, 1986, when he was arrested by Garda O’Sullivan – and, as luck would have it, surrounded by a sea of narcotics.

Top ex-cop Mr O’Sullivan explained: “It was the most heroin I’d seen to that date and sitting nearby was Chris Kinahan.

“From my recollection, when he looked at me, he went pale. And he said, ‘I’m as sick as a parrot.’”

A book published by Irish Sun journalists Stephen Breen and Owen Conlon in 2017, The Cartel, told how Linguaphone tapes were found inside his apartment which helped Christy learn French and Arabic to communicate directly with North African drug dealers.

BOOKS IN COURT

While he initially admitted to being responsible for the drugs haul, Christy changed his tune when he was brought before the courts and blamed an Algerian accomplice, while also claiming he himself was struggling with addiction.

Former Garda Assistant Commissioner Michael O’Sullivan told The Cartel: “Because there was an Algerian national with him at the time it showed he had already been building international connections.

“He’d also come to court with his books and read. Even then, he was already thinking of the future.”

In 1987, he was slapped with a relatively-lean six-year jail sentence, which Irish Sun Crime Editor Stephen Breen believes was crucial to the cartel’s success.

He said: “If he had been given a longer custodial sentence, it would have kept him off the streets a lot longer and therefore would have curtailed his further advancement into the world of drugs.

“If he had been in prison in Ireland for perhaps another four years — getting a ten-year or even a 12-year sentence — that would have been a strong deterrent to others as well.

PRISON DIDN’T STOP HIM

“But it also would have kept him away from establishing those contacts that would ultimately lead to him building this huge €1billion empire.”

Prison wouldn’t stop Christy from working to expand his criminal organisation.

The would-be head honcho spent his time behind bars educating himself on subjects to further his career.

The ‘Dapper Don’ also blamed an underling named Raymond Salinger for his detention, convinced he was responsible for giving information about him to the cops.

Terrified Salinger fled to London to escape his wrath and made a life for himself in the UK, returning to Dublin only in 2002 because his wife was dying of cancer.

A year later, Salinger was sipping a pint in his local boozer, Farrell’s on New Street in the south inner city, while watching a football match when a gunman walked in and shot him four times in the chest.

FIRST VICTIM

It’s widely accepted that Raymond was the first victim of the Kinahan cartel, most likely killed by a henchman on orders from Christy’s son Daniel.

Thus ended Christy’s 17-year wait for revenge.

Back to 1992, Christy was released from prison for the heroin seizure and set about re-establishing himself in the drugs trade.

He had made contacts while serving his sentence at Mountjoy Prison and would later associate with them as he built his empire.

In 1993 he was charged with possession of stolen cheques – he had cashed £16,000 of stolen traveller’s cheques which were taken in an armed robbery – and was bailed, before he fled to the UK.

Christy moved to the Netherlands after the Criminal Assets Bureau was formed to seize the assets of drug traffickers and was convicted there of handling stolen property, receiving a short jail sentence.

ARRESTED AT DAD’S FUNERAL

For the next few years, Christy was set up between Dublin and Tamworth in England.

In 1997, he was arrested at his dad Daniel’s funeral in Dublin on the stolen cheque charges and this time he was denied bail.

As the funeral procession arrived at Sutton church, Christy was spotted standing outside with the rest of the crowd and two uniformed cops approached him with the outstanding warrant.

He was eventually jailed for four years over the cheques, spending time in Portlaoise Prison.

There, he was one of the first Irish prisoners to get his own computer — and used it to brush up on the skills that would make him one of the world’s deadliest narco-terrorists.

At some point during his prison stay, he also became fluent in Dutch and Spanish and gained two degrees – refusing early release to complete one of them.

‘HE WAS DIFFERENT’

Speaking to The Kinahans podcast — hosted by veteran journalist Damien Lane — retired prison officer David McDonald recalled: “He was one of the first prisoners that ever got a standalone computer.

“So we’re talking about a time when the internet didn’t really exist. It was only very, very new coming into society.”

The former warden added: “He was different looking back on it, he was a bit head and shoulders above the other prisoners.

“I’m not saying he’s a nice guy, I’m not saying this to compliment him. But he used his time cleverly and, it’s almost like he had a plan and he was going to execute it. 

“So he seemed to pick things like Spanish as a language and I think it’s pretty well documented at this stage that he would have spent quite a lot of time in Spain.

“But he had educated himself with the ways of the world in a way that no one else did.”

RIGHT-HAND MAN

Kinahan even managed to smuggle a huge mobile phone into the Laois prison, which he hooked up to the computer and in turn the internet. 

However, the tech was so new at the time that jail chiefs weren’t aware he could use it to keep in touch with John Cunningham, his right-hand man who he met during a stint in Dublin’s Mountjoy in 1986.

Cunningham had been serving a 17-year sentence for the kidnapping of Jennifer Guinness, a member of the Guinness brewing dynasty.

Mr McDonald said: “He [Christy] got a mobile phone smuggled in, which would have been a feat in itself because back then those phones were quite large.

“He rigged the phone up to the computer, which gave him internet access, and I don’t think anyone ever did that before.”

After landing back in prison, Christy continued to hatch plans, knowing that there was huge money coming in from Cunningham’s operation in Amsterdam.

TRUSTED FRIEND

A year previous to this, Cunningham had absconded from Shelton Abbey open prison in Co Wicklow. He was 10 years into his 17-year sentence.

Using a fake passport, he travelled to Amsterdam, where he reconnected with Christy.

Cunningham quickly learnt the ins and outs of The Kinahan Organised Crime Group, which would come in handy when he took over the running of operations while Christy served his four-year sentence.

The Irish Sun’s Crime Editor Stephen Breen said: “Christy Kinahan could place his trust in John Cunningham because they went back a long time.

“They knew each other very well, and he was effectively Kinahan’s right-hand man, and he played a central role in establishing the empire.”

All seemed to be going well for the cartel until, in December 1998, in a warehouse in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, a forklift operator unloading a crate of Pitta bread from Amsterdam smashed the pallet onto the floor and made a shocking discovery.

DISASTER STRIKES

Inside was an arsenal of over 15 automatic pistols and 800kg of cannabis.

Unfortunately for John Cunningham, he had been using the same individual who had laundered his Punts into Guilders (Dutch currency) to process the cartel’s shipment, and his name was on the paperwork.

Owen Conlon, co-author of The Cartel book, told the podcast: “So the guards informed their Dutch colleagues, a surveillance operation was launched, and the Dutch decided to tap both Cunningham’s home phone and a phone box nearby his luxurious house.”

They discovered he had been making a number of phone calls to Christy Kinahan from inside Portlaoise prison.

Conlon added: “They were talking about drugs in code. They used to call amphetamines, wallpaper. And they talked about bread, which meant cannabis.

“But the Dutch called in cryptographers. Code-breakers from their military. And once they came in, I mean, it was pretty easily figured out what they were actually talking about.”

MOVE TO BELGIUM

In March 2000, police made their move on Cunningham’s mansion in south Amsterdam.

They discovered a ledger in his house which indicated about €31 million worth of cannabis and ecstasy had been sent back to Ireland after he took over from Christy.

Cunningham was sentenced to seven years in prison.

But once again, the timing worked out as one month later Christy got the news that he was being released from Portlaoise.

He walked free in mid-2001 and moved to Belgium.

This is believed to be when the gang first got serious about money laundering.

DIVERSIFYING RISK

Over three years, Christy began to invest in local property, including a local casino and a handful of residential buildings.

Christy also became an admirer of billionaire financier George Soros, who espoused an investment strategy of diversification to lessen risk, and recommended his books to others.

He read banking books and travelled widely to seek investment opportunities including oil deals in China, motorways in Libya and Amazonian land deals.

He laundered his cash selling cement, sugar, precious stones, cucumbers and even chicken guts.

Conlon said: “Again, he began to come through to the attention of the authorities in Belgium for one reason or another. And they began to investigate his assets.”

This investigation led to Christy making one of the most influential decisions of his life, moving to Spain.

THE FIRST HUTCH MURDER

In 2015, Gary Hutch is shot dead in Spain, sparking the infamous Hutch-Kinahan feud, which has claimed 18 lives to date.

Gary, the nephew of criminal figure Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch, once held a senior role in the Kinahan Organised Crime Group and was close pals with Daniel.

However, relations soured between Gary and the Kinahan cartel when Spanish police – working through Operation Shovel – carried out a series of raids on the gang’s operation on the Costa Del Sol.

Gary was in Holland at the time of the raids, a coincidence that would lead to him coming to the suspicion of other gang members.

Christy and his sons Daniel and Christopher Junior would face a total of just seven months in jail as prosecutors found it impossible to pin them down with anything concrete.

But this didn’t mean that Gary Hutch was back in the fold.

BREAKDOWN IN RELATIONSHIP

An escalation in the breakdown of the relationship came at the funeral of Jean Boylan, Christy Kinahan’s first wife and mother of Daniel and Christopher Jr.

As a procession of friends and family arrived at Mount Jerome cemetery in Harold’s Cross, south Dublin, they noticed a piece of graffiti across the road.

On a grey concrete stairwell, the words ‘Gary Hutch U Rat’ were spelled out in bright red spray paint.

Paranoia was rife on both sides of the table and the embers of a feud were starting to smoke.

Gary Hutch had decided he would attempt a hit on Daniel Kinahan’s life.

On a hot summer night in Marbella, Spain, Gary organised for an associate to wait outside of Daniel’s home as the gang were out partying, celebrating the birthday of a boxing coach.

INNOCENT BOXER BLASTED

But Kinahan had left earlier and was already inside, with the inexperienced, coked-up hitman ending up blasting innocent boxer Jamie Moore instead.

After the botched hit, Gary did a runner to Amsterdam, keeping a low profile.

Eventually, a deal was thrashed out – €200,000 would be paid as compensation for the incident, or Gary would be taken out.

Plus, a punishment shooting would be carried out on Patrick Hutch, Gary’s brother – with Daniel himself pulling the trigger.

Thinking it was safe to head back to Spain, Gary returned in the summer of 2015.

But despite the belief that the whole matter was buried, Daniel Kinahan wasn’t prepared to let it go.

REGENCY HOTEL INCIDENT

Hutch was returning to his apartment complex in Estepona when he was blasted by a hitman in Spain on September 25, 2015.

This eventually led to the infamous Regency Hotel shooting in 2016, where men armed with assault rifles and dressed as gardai attacked a boxing weigh-in attended by intended target Daniel Kinahan.

Thus followed a series of retaliatory killings carried out by the Kinahan cartel that led to global attention and infamy.

Christy, for his part, is now believed to be living in Dubai, with his ‘business’ taking him around the world from this central spot while he lives a life of luxury outside the clutches of the authorities.

Past the feud, the sheer scale of the Kinahan criminal empire was laid bare in April 2022 when the US government announced a $5million bounty for information leading to the arrests of the heads of the Kinahan cartel — Christy and his sons Daniel and Christy Jr. — as well as four lieutenants.

US Ambassador to Ireland Claire Cronin revealed the cartel had been accused of a wide range of “heinous crimes all around the world, including murder and trafficking firearms and narcotics”.

STILL ON THE RUN

She added: “Transnational organised crime is a multi-billion dollar business that transcends geographical boundaries and threatens global stability and democracies.”

Gregory Gatjanis, associate director of the US Treasury’s Office of Global Targeting, said Kinahan associates had trafficked drugs on American soil and were deemed as big a threat to national security as Japan’s Yakuza, Italian organised crime groups and the Russian underworld.

Matt Horne, deputy director of investigations at the UK’s National Crime Agency, said: “This group thought they were untouchable, but this shows that we will explore every opportunity to disrupt their criminal activities. And we will not stop here.”

But the brazen Kinahans have managed to stay on the run, holed up out of reach of US law enforcement overseas – so far.

Now Christy’s son Daniel has stepped into his shoes as the top dog of the cartel.

Christy’s sons and their cronies continue to evade the United States’ DEA, An Garda Siochana, Interpol and a number of other police services globally.

The Kinahans is available on all popular podcast platforms including Apple and Spotify.

Christy has been known as the ‘Dapper Don’ Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]