"Are the Kinahans Facing Their Final Chapter? Inside the Dubai Hideout of 'Paranoid' Mob Boss Daniel as His £1 Billion Empire Falls Apart"

HE is one of the most notorious mob bosses in the world, heading up the once all-powerful Kinahan cartel from his Dubai bolthole.

But the net could finally be closing in around kingpin Daniel Kinahan , said to be living in constant fear of arrest and unable for years to trust anyone he does not know well.

The net could finally be closing in on mob boss Daniel Kinahan The Irishman has been living in Dubai for years out of reach of the authorities The gang has been linked to a blood-soaked war on the streets of Ireland Their drug-smuggling empire has stretched across the world

Paranoid Daniel, 48, along with dad Christy Snr and brother Christopher, commanded a billion-pound criminal empire, part of a network that controlled as much as one third of Europe’s cocaine imports.

Since fleeing to Dubai in 2016, the trio have lived a life of luxury while forging close relations with South American cartels and even cosying up to terrorist group Hezbollah .

All the while, a bloodthirsty feud with rivals the Hutch family raged back home in their native Dublin, claiming more than a dozen lives.

A source said: “If Dubai wanted to remove them from their jurisdiction, they could have done that a long time ago.

“And they haven’t done that because the Kinahans and their network of people are very much connected with the elites there.

“That relationship seems solid at the moment, but for how long?

“The Kinahans have become a source of embarrassment to the Dubai elites, and to the country itself. And I think that time may be against them.”

With business back home devastated thanks to the efforts of investigators, and with Dubai now open to extraditing wanted fugitives, time could soon be up for the Kinahans .

Police hold them responsible for flooding the UK with guns and drugs, supplying gangs across Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow among other places.

As much as three-quarters of their business and money was generated in the UK, while former US ambassador to Ireland Claire Cronin said the group stands accused of “heinous” crimes, including murder, arms trafficking and drug smuggling.

A testament to the family’s deadly power and reach is the $15million collective bounty by US authorities.

Now, a brand new ten-part Sun podcast, Kinahans Downfall , details how investigators took down the cartel while its leaders lived it up in exile.

More than two million listeners worldwide tuned into the first series, which told the story of how “Dapper Don” Christy Snr, 68, .

The show, which won Podcast of the Year at the 2023 Irish Journalism Awards, wrapped up shortly after the gang’s top brass were hit with US sanctions.

Gangland war

At the time, it seemed their end was imminent. Instead, they continued to enjoy lives of luxury in Dubai, with Daniel running the day-to-day operations and Christy Jnr taking care of money laundering.

Back home in Ireland police pushed on with their investigations into the savage gang war that had exploded on their streets.

The vicious feud was triggered when Gary Hutch, nephew of Irish underworld boss Gerry “The Monk” Hutch , was shot dead in 2015.

Once a pal of Daniel’s, relations had soured — and a piece of graffiti spelled out what they now thought of him: “Gary Hutch, you rat.”

Their criminal empire was founded by Daniel’s father Christy Kinahan Snr The murder of Gerry Hutch’s nephew triggered a bloody gangland feudCredit: PA Daniel’s brother, Christopher, also has a $5million bounty on his headCredit: Crispin Rodwell – The Sun Dublin The US government has the cartel in its sightsCredit: PA

A botched hit on Daniel in 2015 sealed Gary’s fate, and he was murdered outside his apartment on the Costa del Sol.

The following year masked gunmen attacked a boxing weigh-in at the Regency Hotel in north Dublin.

Disguised as police and armed with AK-47s, they stormed into the ballroom and roamed the building .

They were hunting for Daniel Kinahan, but he escaped from a window. In response, his cartel carried out a series of savage retaliatory killings.

Too exposed in either Spain or Dublin, the Kinahans left for Dubai — out of the clutches of the authorities.

And one of Ireland’s former top cops insists the brutal war is not yet over.

Retired Assistant Commissioner Pat Leahy told the Kinahans Downfall podcast: “I don’t think they will forget what happened at the time.

“Too many people have been killed, too much blood has been spilled, and people can’t let go of this.”

As long as you are well behaved, and you are spending money in their country, (Dubai) don’t really ask the question as to where the money came from

Former FBI agent Karen Greenaway

But in Dubai, Daniel was safe. Keen to avoid upsetting the authorities there, organised crime’s highest echelons maintained an understanding that the dirty side of their business such as assassinations should happen elsewhere.

For a bunch of thugs, they could be gentlemen if they needed to.

American struggle

as the mob bosses laundered millions under their noses.

Former FBI agent Karen Greenaway told The Sun: “Dubai has chosen to view money laundering as something that really is not a problem, almost to a level of it not being a crime.

“If you are laundering money in their country, they don’t really care. As long as you are well behaved, and you are spending money in their country, they don’t really ask the question as to where the money came from.”

Despite their global reach, the Kinahans never managed to make inroads into selling drugs to the US.

The family have been on the Americans’ radar since 2015, first through the FBI and DEA and then the Treasury in 2022.

Two men dressed as a police SWAT team stormed into the Regency hotelCredit: Splash News Daniel Kinahan was the target but he escaped through a windowCredit: PA:Press Association Daniel Kinahan, pictured here with Tyson Fury, has close connections to the boxing world. Fury has since severed all links with KinahanCredit: Not known, clear with picture desk

The mob’s drugs business has seen them sail close to US winds, a dangerous place to sail for any cartel with US President Donald Trump .

But according to Greenaway, cracking the States would have proven difficult for them because the Irish expats living there have largely turned their backs on a life of crime.

And she points to the number of well-established gangs there, as well as fears of the local justice system, as two of the reasons why the Daniel and Co looked at other markets to plunder.

Five-star life

At one point Daniel lived in a villa on Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, not far from .

His May 2017 wedding to partner Caoimhe Robinson took place at the world-famous Burj Al Arab hotel.

Six years earlier she had lost her former partner, Micka “The Panda” Kelly, in a hail of bullets outside a north Dublin apartment block.

Now she was tying the knot with Ireland’s top mob boss at organised crime’s equivalent of a royal wedding.

Daniel is someone who for very good reasons now doesn’t trust people

Source

The long list of guests was a who’s who of mob bosses, who, like the Kinahans, were using Dubai as a haven.

They included Moroccan Dutch murderer Ridouan Taghi, Mafia-linked Italian Raffaele Imperiale and Bosnian mob boss Edin Gacanin.

Such was the concentration of criminal masterminds in this room that the media dubbed it the “super cartel”.

Also attending was unwitting heavyweight champ , a sign of how Kinahan had managed to establish himself as a powerful and well-connected figure within the world of boxing. Fury has since severed all links with Kinahan.

Across a whole floor of his headquarters in a skyscraper next to the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, were offices dedicated to boxing, real estate and freight shipping.

Time up?

But in 2025, Irish authorities finally secured the ultimate weapon to bring the Kinahans to justice — an extradition treaty with Dubai.

Police have already sent two files to the Irish Public Prosecutor. One recommends that Daniel Kinahan be charged with directing a criminal organisation.

Daniel Kinahan’s wife, Caoimhe Robinson, was previously in a relationship with another mobster The wedding took place at the luxury Burj Al Arab hotel in DubaiCredit: Corbis – Getty

The second seeks to charge him over his alleged role in the murder of Eddie Hutch in the days after the Regency Hotel attack in February 2016.

Cops are confident the Dubai authorities will co-operate. And with more than 80 cartel members jailed thanks to the work of the Irish police and the UK’s National Crime Agency, the sudden shift in the balance of power has left Daniel Kinahan weaker than ever.

A source said: “He’s a professional drug trafficker who’s continuously trying to weigh up the odds of who is close to him.

“Who can he trust What can he do? What happens if he’s extradited? What type of evidence is there against him?

“But he’s a man of a certain intellectual type, and he’s a man of a certain personality. I don’t think he fits in very well into, you know, normal society in Dubai. He is someone who for very good reasons now doesn’t trust people.

“He has surrounded himself with people that he can trust, but he has huge issues with dealing with others that he can’t. But his life is being completely disrupted from top to bottom.”