Kinahan cartel leaders 'should be worried' after extradition of senior lieutenant

Drew Harris said the leaders of the Kinahan cartel in Dubai 'should be worried'. Picture: Collins Photos

The Garda Commissioner said the leaders of the Kinahan cartel in Dubai “should be worried” after senior lieutenant Sean McGovern was extradited from there to Ireland to face gangland charges.

Drew Harris urged members, both junior and senior, in the cartel — who are either at large or in jail — to think about whether or not to help gardaí in their efforts to bring the leaders to justice.

Mr Harris was commenting on the transfer over a week ago of McGovern — seen as the right-hand man of cartel leader Daniel Kinahan — by gardaí and military pilots from Dubai. He was brought to the Criminal Courts of Justice to be charged with directing and facilitating an organised crime group and with a Kinahan-Hutch feud murder.

Speaking in Garda Headquarters in Phoenix Park, Mr Harris said the leaders, who are still in Dubai, should be in fear they will be next.

“Yes, they should be worried," he said. "They should have been worried now for a number of years because there’s huge investigative effort and international investigative effort has gone into the Kinahan organised crime gang.” 

He said a lot of comments of what “couldn’t be done have been done” and a legal extradition had happened.

Mr Harris said because of the cooperation of police in Dubai and legal authorities in the UAE, “we’ve seen an individual extradited back to Ireland to face justice here”.

Mr Harris reminded other members of the cartel they are in a bind, but there are options for them, in terms of cooperating with gardaí.

He said: “I’d also like to point out too, the other senior lieutenants in the Kinahan organised crime group, who are now facing justice or who are now imprisoned, the sanctions and the rewards still stand — there’s $15m there of reward money through the federal law enforcement authorities of the US, so that is still in play.

I just want to remind other members of the Kinahan organised crime gang the perilous position they are now in, that ourselves and other law enforcement are fixed on them and are fixed on bringing them, all of them, to justice.

“So, all of them should be worried and thinking about the choices, the serious life choices that are now ahead of them in respect of what to do over the coming months.” 

Deputy Commissioner, Security, Governance and Strategy, Justin Kelly said a couple of years ago, when he was Assistant Commissioner, Operations and Security, both he and the commissioner had said gardaí would be “relentless”, and the extradition of McGovern was “absolute evidence” of that.

He said the “exact same” applied to other transnational crime gangs.

Referring to the Kinahan cartel, he said at one point there were 47 members of it in jail.

Mr Kelly also called on Kinahan lieutenants to have a “really good think” about what choices they make in the coming months.