CHRISTY KINAHAN SENIOR has been charged with passport fraud after a long-running Spanish court probe sparked by dozens of arrests in three countries including Britain and Ireland.

But the convicted drug dealer has been told he will not be tried for money laundering or membership of a criminal gang.

Spanish state prosecutors have also dropped their case against a string of other suspects including his two sons Daniel and Christopher after failing to build a watertight case against them.

Daniel was named in the Irish High Court in 2018 as a senior player in organised crime on a global scale despite having no criminal convictions. 

He was at the centre of an international controversy earlier this year when he was identified as the advisor who masterminded boxer Tyson Fury’s lucrative two-fight deal with Anthony Joshua.

He and his brother have had the threat of long prison sentences hanging over their heads for more than a decade in Spain after they were arrested by heavily-armed police at their Costa del Sol homes as part of a five-nation operation against organised crime.

Alfredo Rubalcaba, Spain’s Home Secretary when the Kinahans were held in May 2010, linked the alleged gang ringleaders to a string of murders when he congratulated police after the raids.

In its early stages, the judicial probe focused on allegations of drugs and weapons trafficking.

It emerged in 2014, a judge probing Christy and a gang of suspected accomplices including his two sons had decided to drop her behind-closed-doors investigation into those crimes and focus solely on other allegations they were facing including money laundering and membership of a criminal gang.

Today, it was confirmed Christy Kihanan and two other men, Robert Edward Phillips and James Gregory Naughton, have been charged with passport fraud.

Jasvinder Singh Kamoo, said to have played a key money-laundering role by police investigators in a report highlighted by the Spanish press in their initial coverage of the case after the arrests, has been charged with using fake number plates on a Mercedes.

And a fifth man, Ross Gerard Browning, has been charged with unlawful possession of a weapon. 

Christy Kinahan, now also based in Dubai, has been warned he could face a prison sentence of up to three years and a fine if convicted, although the minimum prison sentence under Spanish law is just six months. 

The time he spent in prison on remand after his Operation Shovel arrest, thought to be around six months, will be taken into account in determining if he will have to return to jail after any conviction. 

It is not yet clear if his defence lawyers will now seek a plea bargain deal, as state prosecutors have yet to submit the indictment the investigating judge has now asked them to formulate.

The court decision to charge Christy Kinahan was made at the same time his two sons were told the case against them was being dropped and the written ruling with the details has been sent to state prosecutors and the defence lawyers of those under investigation. 

Judicial sources today confirmed the current investigating judge behind the Kinahan ruling, based at Estepona’s Court of Investigation Number Three, had acted at the behest of state prosecutors who had requested the “provisional archiving” of the money laundering and criminal association allegations against the suspects.