Kinahans seen enjoying life in Dubai despite $5m bounties on their heads
As head of a global organised crime group, he is one of the world’s most wanted men, and has received anti-surveillance training to hide his identity.
But perched in a VIP seat, wearing a Panama hat, polo shirt, white trousers, and blue trainers, Christy Kinahan Sr is doing little to disguise himself at an MMA event.
The Irish crime boss, known as the ‘Dapper Don’ for his sartorial style, was pictured for the first time in years with son Daniel at the 971 Fighting Championship (971 FC) in Dubai last June.
The fugitives fled from Spain to the UAE in 2016 and went to ground in April 2022, after the US put $5million bounties on their heads and those of their lieutenants, while imposing sanctions on their crime group.
A file image of Christy Kinahan.
Christy Sr runs the cartel that controls most of the cocaine brought into Ireland and Europe, along with arms-smuggling and money-laundering operations.
Born to Irish parents in Ealing, west London, Christy moved to Dublin when he was a boy. In the 1970s, he was a car thief, but by the late Eighties had moved into the city’s heroin trade, ending up on in Portlaoise Prison a number of times. He returned to London and later moved to Spain where he became a force in the international underworld.
His sons, Daniel and Christopher Jr, were in their teens when they joined their father’s crime operation.
They had waged a war with rival criminals in Dublin after a high-profile attempt was made on Daniel’s life at a boxing weigh-in at the Regency Hotel with 18 people being killed in the resulting feud.
A file image of Daniel Kinahan. Pic: Collins
In Dubai, Christy Sr reinvented himself as a consultant named Chris Vincent, an international businessman married to a Turkish woman.
The Kinahans have an international criminal clientele, including Mexican and Colombian cartels, Hezbollah, and Iranian intelligence services. The gang is also reported to be aiding Russia to evade sanctions by shipping crude oil around the globe for the Kremlin.
The family have reputedly amassed a personal fortune of €1.3billion. The senior Kinahan has received counter-surveillance training and evaded tracking and monitoring.
An investigation by The Sunday Times, in partnership with the open-source outlet Bellingcat, has now obtained images of Christy Sr and Daniel living freely and out in public.
Dubai. Pic: Getty Images
The pair were spotted sitting openly in the white VIP seats at the front of a crowd of 6,000 at Dubai’s Coca-Cola Arena. Both watched bouts for six hours, doing little to obscure themselves.
The investigation did not find the Kinahans through traditional sources but used open-source journalism with an AI-powered facial recognition search. A months-long trawl of spectator-filmed content uploaded to social media, and a frame-by-frame examination of a six-hour livestream of the event, pinpointed Daniel sitting at one end of the VIP ringside seating and his 68-year-old father at the other.
Images were cross-referenced with other footage and pictures of the pair. Daniel – who was seen for around an hour during the event – made no attempt to hide, The Sunday Times said.
Christy Sr was in his seat for most of the competition and was observed casually ordering drinks and chatting to spectators around him, the newspaper added, although he subtly obscured his face when cameras were pointed in his direction.
The investigation highlights how Christy Sr and his 48-year-old son still live a VIP lifestyle in Dubai, despite the UAE’s insistence that it has taken robust action against the gang.
Dubai. Pic: Getty Images
The Emirates claim to have frozen € 200 million of the cartel’s assets across UAE-registered businesses and mapped the organisation’s front companies and proxies. However, the Kinahans seem not to be affected.
Investigators have linked the gang to Iran’s intelligence services and the Lebanon-based Islamic militant group Hezbollah. The gang is also reported to be helping Russia evade sanctions by shipping crude oil for Putin’s Kremlin.
The origins of the Kinahan cartel go back to a central Dublin estate in the 1980s when Christy’s ‘career’ in the heroin trade took off after the city’s main importer, Larry Dunne, was jailed.
When his two sons joined the business early in the millennium, they began to generate serious money through the expanding cocaine market.
Daniel has been heavily involved in combat sports since the early 2010s. He co-founded MTK Global, a boxing management firm that signed high-profile boxers including the former world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury.
The firm disbanded after US officials moved against the Kinahan gang. As well as the rewards for their arrest, the imposition of Russia-style sanctions against the family in 2022 also allowed money or assets they had in the US or in American banks to be frozen.
The UAE has previously said it takes allegations of criminal activity extremely seriously.
It says the authorities co-operate closely on cases involving foreign citizens in accordance with international commitments. It says it has also conducted its own investigations into the Kinahans, resulting in the freezing of all relevant assets.
Additional reporting by Andy Dolan
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