FORMER GARDA COMMISSIONER Nóirín O’Sullivan has said that a $15 million reward for information to prosecute three leading figures of the Kinahan cartel is a “game changer”.
The rewards – amounting to up to $5 million for each of the three Kinahan family members, Christy Kinahan Senior and his sons Christy Kinahan Junior and Daniel Kinahan – are being offered by the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Speaking on Newstalk’s Anton Savage Show, O’Sullivan said that the announcement was years in the making.
It is a game changer in so far as it will thwart their ambitions to actually reinvent and legitimise themselves as legitimate business people which they are trying to do and with some degree of success.
At the briefing this week at which the reward was announced, a US government official said the Kinahans “join the ranks” of Japan’s Yakuza, Italy’s Camorra, and the Russian mafia.
O’Sullivan continued: “I think, if I’m honest, it’s cold comfort to some of the victims and the families of the victims of the devastation and the misery that the Kinahans and their associates have inflicted on communities right around this country, and indeed in other countries as well.”
I think it will also call out the propaganda and the misinformation that they have been peddling about themselves…I think the whole world can see these are drug dealers, gun-runners and just people who are just completely mercenary.
“At the end of the day this is the equivalent to a small multinational corporation that actually is peddling in drugs, firearms and a lot of human misery, but then at the same time trying to legitimise and launder their money and the proceeds of their crime.
“Any day that you can get international law enforcement, trans-national law enforcement and particularly the Americans to support an initiative like this, it’s a huge success to An Garda Síochána.”
This is part of an unprecedented international action against the Irish-founded crime gang being coordinated by US, EU and UK law enforcement. The various measures are expected to have a seismic impact on the operations of the criminal operation.
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