The true story of Ireland’s mafia

The extent to which the Irish Kinahan cartel has flooded the streets of the UK with drugs and guns has been revealed by police.

The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said the cartel had sat in a position “up-stream” supplying UK crime gangs for two decades.

Irish police have also estimated the majority of drugs the Kinahans have shipped from mainland Europe have been destined for the UK. Such estimates would make the cartel – believed to be worth €1bn (£835m) – one of the biggest ever drugs suppliers to the UK.

However, a lawyer for the Kinahans said “rumours” and “theories” about them have not been tested in court.

The revelations are made in a new BBC Northern Ireland four-part documentary series about the crime family.

Kinahan: The True Story of Ireland’s Mafia, tracks the cartel from its beginnings as a small-time street dealing operation in 1980s Dublin to its reputation as one of the world’s most feared and notorious criminal organisations.

In recent years, law enforcement has suggested a so-called super cartel involving the Kinahans and several of Europe’s other biggest criminal organisations has controlled a third of the European cocaine market.

In 2022, the United States offered a $5m (£3.9m) reward for information about each of the Kinahan cartel’s alleged leaders: Christy Kinahan Senior and his sons Daniel Kinahan and Christy Kinahan Junior.

The then US Ambassador to Ireland Claire Cronin said: “The Kinahan trans-national criminal organisation has been accused of a wide range of heinous crimes, all around the world, including murder, trafficking in firearms and narcotics.”

The Kinahans became internationally renowned after a gangland feud erupted in Ireland in 2016 and 18 people were murdered – 16 shot dead by the cartel.

In the documentary series, UK police and An Garda Síochána (Irish police) – including undercover officers – speak exclusively about the threat posed by the Kinahan organisation.

With the help of secret recordings and police surveillance footage, there are new revelations about operations undertaken to dismantle the cartel’s structure in the UK and Ireland.

In particular, the NCA targeted the UK arm of the Kinahan cartel – based in the town of Tamworth, outside Birmingham – which was home to some of the group’s most senior members.

At this stage, the Kinahan family had moved to Dubai.

But in Tamworth, was Thomas “Bomber” Kavanagh.

An NCA investigator has said: “If you were to look at the Kinahan organised crime group, and the hierarchy within that, we assessed Thomas Kavanagh as being very senior; probably one below Daniel Kinahan, and effectively the European CEO of that drug trafficking network.”

In order to tackle the cartel, British and Irish police believed Kavanagh had to be stopped and the series reveals how they set about doing this.

In 2022, Kavanagh was jailed for 21 years for importing tens of millions of pounds of drugs and money-laundering.

NCA regional head of investigations Ty Surgeon said: “For approximately the last 20 years, the Kinahan crime group has been on the radar of the NCA.

“They’re drug smugglers, they trade in firearms, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they supply many other UK crime groups.”

The cartel are understood to have links to gangs in Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, Belfast and other cities.

The head of the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau in Ireland, Seamus Boland, said that, for more than a decade, “Ireland only represented about 25% of their business”.

“About 75% of their business and their money was actually being generated in the UK,” he added.

This is the first time police have spoken on the record about just how big a player the Kinahan crime group has been in the UK.

As a result of NCA and particularly Irish Garda operations, more than 80 cartel members have been jailed, including many so-called hitmen for hire.

It is understood the Kinahans now operate largely outside the UK, as wholesalers on the international illegal drugs markets.

This means they would be involved in bringing drugs from South America to Europe and then moving those drugs to other gangs to distribute, including in the UK.

The series will also explore how this has taken the Kinahans into a network of international crime that includes Hezbollah, in the Middle East.

While law enforcement agencies across the world have publicly named the Kinahan Cartel, a lawyer for the Kinahans noted a “massive investigation” by five countries ended with a dismissal of the main charges against them.

Kinahan: The True Story of Ireland’s Mafia is a BBC Northern Ireland production.

The first three episodes are now available on BBC iPlayer.

Episode one will air on BBC One NI on 31 March at 22:40 BST.