Gardai are analysing crucial information that could help prosecute key members of the Kinahan cartel, Commissioner Drew Harris said.
Ireland’s most senior policeman added while the probe into the organised crime gang remains ongoing it is making progress. The US Department of State is offering rewards of up to €5million for information that leads to the financial disruption of the mob or the arrest or conviction of Christopher Kinahan Snr, Daniel Kinahan or Christopher Kinahan Jnr.
The mammoth reward was announced during an unprecedented press conference earlier this year. The US also froze the trio’s assets.
Read more: Kinahan cartel flew millions of cocaine into Ireland on private plane
Senior associates of the cartel including Sean McGovern, 36, Ian Dixon, 32, Bernard Clancy, 44, and 62-year-old John Morrissey were also named and sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Speaking outside Finglas Garda Station, Commissioner Drew Harris said: “As I’ve said before, this is work that’s ongoing. We’re working together with our colleagues in particular with US federal law enforcement and those investigations carry on.
“We’re very much now in receipt of information, our appeals for information have brought forward. The recognition by US law enforcement authorities of the profile of the Kinahan organised crime gang has brought forward information and we and they [Americans] are working together in terms of analysing that but also turning that information into evidence so we can pursue a prosecution.”
Commissioner Harris said he believed the financial incentive offered by the United States will prove “very important”. Earlier this year, America went to war with the Kinahans labelling them a threat to the security of the US – and will do all in its power to smash the cartel, and jail its leaders.
In April, the US ambassador to Ireland, Claire Cronin, said the Biden administration wants to send a clear message to transnational organised crime groups. And she told how the Kinahan cartel have been accused of “heinous crimes” around the world for murder as well as trafficking drugs and firearms.
She revealed the American authorities were offering the huge reward for information in the hope it will cause “financial destruction” of the Kinahan gang, or the arrest and conviction of each of its leaders, Christy Kinahan Snr and or his sons Daniel and Christopher Jnr. Commissioner Harris was speaking following the official book launch of The Guardians: 100 years of An Garda Siochana 1922-2022.
Compiled by Garda Stephen Moore, it explores the first generation of the Civic Guard/Garda Siochana, through the 1950s and 1960s and brings the reader right up to the modern policing service provided in 21st-century Ireland.
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