The Kinahan cartel will continue to function – even if Daniel Kinahan is taken out, a leading expert has warned.
Professor Anna Sergi – who is a world authority on mafia gangs - says she believes the drugs gang has a plan to cope if Kinahan is either killed or arrested.
“I am pretty sure there is a plan for what happens if Daniel dies or what happens if he gets arrested,” Professor Sergi.
The Italian professor, who is based at the University of Essex in southern England was speaking on the Irish crime and security podcast The Dark State – in the wake of the unprecedented international crackdown on the Irish mob.
That saw US authorities offer rewards of up to €5 million for information leading to the arrest of Daniel (44), his father Christy (65) and his brother Christopher (41).
The Americans also placed them and other cartel bosses on a sanctions list that means no US banks can have any dealings with them and they aren’t allowed to fly on any commercial aircraft from that country.
The trio are holed up in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and that state followed the American lead and hit them with identical sanctions last Thursday – which means all their assets there have been frozen.
Those actions were seen as a hammer blow to the cartel – which is one of Europe’s biggest drugs suppliers and has assets of up to €1 billion, but Professor Sergi told the latest edition of The Dark State that it would be premature to say it was dead.
That echoes the view of a senior anti-drugs investigator who told The Mirror on Saturday that he believed Colombian drugs barons would still send the cartel hundreds of millions of euro worth of cocaine every year.
Professor Sergi told the podcast that she believed the cartel now had three priorities - to save Kinahan, to protect the assets they have now and to keep selling drugs.
She told host John Mooney: “One priority is to save Daniel because he is the most exposed.
“He is the one everyone wants.
“Then there is the priority to secure whatever is hidden from the authorities in terms of assets because not everything obviously will be on the radar.
“The third priority is how to continue with whatever it is that is still the most lucrative activities that they are doing - namely drugs.”
She said it was vital for the cartel to get Kinahan out of Dubai – before he is arrested and extradited to either Ireland or America for prosecution.
She said: “So clearly this implies getting a [false] passport somehow getting Daniel out of Dubai before he is arrested and putting him in some other country where extradition is difficult to obtain.
“That could be anything from Venezuela to Ecuador or anywhere where he could have associates who will want his money and his expertise and will help him and hide him and therefore make him disappear.”
She also said the need to keep selling drugs and protect their assets could see someone else with a lower profile taking over at the head of the cartel - and replacing Kinahan.
She said: “This is the Italian mafia way where the least suspect person will appear on the scene at some point to the authorities.
“And the financial part obviously depends on whether they saw the sanctions coming.”
And she added that if the gang managed to secure two of those priorities, it would continue to thrive as a drugs outfit.
She said: “It has a resilient structure.
“We are not talking about amateurs here, so I would expect if two of these priorities are somehow met the group will continue even if Daniel is arrested.
“It really depends at this stage on their capabilities and their forward thinking.”
Professor Sergi also warned that one major hurdle for the cartel was whether or not it was dependent on the Kinahan name.
She said that if the deals the cartel depended on came out just because of Daniel Kinahan's relationships with Colombian suppliers then it could be in trouble.
But she added that if there were systems set up that allowed other senior Kinahan bosses to do deals, then it could continue as an important gang - especially as Daniel has repeatedly by law ebforcedmanty and outfits like the Hutch mob.
That gang has been feuding with the Kinahans for seven years in a war that has left 18 men dead.
She said: “Everyone, including Daniel, must have expected his demise.
“They were targeting him to kill him more than once, so I am pretty sure there was a plan for what happens if Daniel dies or what happens if Daniel gets arrested.
“I would not rule out some sort of internal change but that very much depends on an analytical level whether their name is currency because they are alive - or whether the name is currency independent from them.
“That is a very big if.”
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