It’s a plot that would be an instant Hollywood hit, with drugs, huge profits, gang wars and a cast of colourful characters with street nicknames that perpetuate the aura of the criminal underworld: ‘The Monk’; ‘Fat’ Freddie; ‘Kingsize’; the ‘Dapper Don’. In reality, it is a vicious and bloody feud between two rival drug cartels, seeking control of Dublin’s lucrative street drugs and more. Much more.
It’s a story of crooks, killers, snitches and rats, robbers and cops; it stretches from the jungles of Colombia to Mexican drug mules, the Russian mafia, Spain’s Costa del Sol and Canary Islands champion boxers and low-level cigarette smugglers. At stake is who controls the supply of narcotics flowing from South America into the United Kingdom and Europe; and so far, the drug war has claimed 12 lives in the past two years in Dublin alone.
And the tale goes like this…
Turning 60 last May, Christy Kinahan wanted nothing more than to retire. Over four decades of street-hardened thuggery, the ‘Dapper Don’ built up his criminal enterprise into one that garnered €400 million (Dh1.72 billion) in 2015 alone through smuggling and selling cocaine, heroin, marijuana — anything that hooked the weak — and moving product from South America into Britain and Europe. Then there was other money too from racketeering, stolen goods, prostitution and ‘insurance’ — offering business owners protection for when things went bad, as they did when they declined to buy his policies.
He had done a 10-year stretch behind bars in the 1980s for moving heroin, and the Dapper Don refused early release. He had too much to learn, finishing degrees in the law and business — and perfecting Russian, Spanish and Dutch. All were skills that would stand his criminal ambitions well — and Kinahan wanted to turn his cartel into the most successful in Irish history.
He used Spanish to work with the Colombian cartels, promising them an effective route to get their cocaine from the jungle labs into Europe. So too with the Mexicans. Russian gained him the trust of the new oligarchs of organised crime who muscled and murdered their way into controlling criminal gangs across western Europe, and Dutch to work with the local mafia who control the flow of drugs and guns through Rotterdam and Zeebrugge.
Christy senior believed in free trade and globalisation — just as long as he could control it. And competition? That meant being ruthless. By the time that 60th birthday rolled around, Kinahan had retired and moved abroad, and had passed on control of his operations to his sons, Daniel and Christy ‘The Cap’ junior. The move was safer for him as it was more difficult to organise a hit on him, Irish police say.
For legitimacy, Daniel is a boxing promoter, organising WBO bouts for champions and up-and-coming fighters who weren’t afraid to get their knuckles bruised. He has a luxury villa in Marbella, the international playground for the rich, famous and infamous on Spain’s Costa Del Sol.
Christy junior — a thug so feared by those who work for him that he’s referred to only as ‘The Cap’, and mentioning his name could single them out for being a ‘rat’ or informer, runs the down-and-dirty, day-to-day operations. Daniel is the bigger-picture guy. And their right-hand man is ‘Fat’ Freddie Thomson, just out now from serving a 20-month stretch after a vicious bar fight.
Working for Christy and the cartel is an ambitious hoodlum, Gary Hutch, who has the type of criminal pedigree that only comes from generations of underworld activity. He has a brother, Derek ‘Del Boy’ Hutch, who’s serving 16 years for knifing a man to death.
His father, Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch runs a drug-dealing gang in the inner city of Dublin. ‘The Monk’ too had been in and out of jail since he was 10. He was last released in 1985, and police believe he became rich from bank and jewel heists, drug dealing and anything else that would turn a quick profit. He gained the name ‘The Monk’ because of his frugal lifestyle, meant to throw the Gardai, the Irish police, and the Criminal Asset Bureau (Cab) — a powerful anti-crime and tax unit that ruthlessly pursues and seizes the assets of criminals. He also has a sense of humour, calling one of legitimate businesses Cab, as in ‘carry any body’. Now in his mid-50s, he too has ambitions — to carve out a piece of the Kinahan action one way or another.
Through his day-to-day dealings with ‘The Cap’ and Daniel, Gary realises there’s an opportunity. Daniel has a lot of cash in his Marbella villa, and Hutch hatches a plot to hit the villa in disguise and stage an armed robbery to steal €1 million. The robbery is foiled, however, when a boxer staying at the villa overcomes the intruders.
Gary is in deep trouble.
He’s ordered to pay €200,000 in retributions. He manages to scrape it together, and then the Kinahans want the same again — another €200,000 — to spare his life. Days later, despite desperate pleadings from the Hutchs back in Dublin to spare his life, Gary is chased down and assassinated in a Marbella apartment complex in September 2015.
It’s war.
Weeks later, as some members of the Kinahan cartel sit drinking in a Dublin pub, two gunmen burst in and open fire. No one is killed, but the Kinahans are not going to take that lying down. They discover Darren Kearns was one of the two gunmen. On December 30, Kearns is gunned down in front of his wife as they leave a Chinese restaurant — so much for fortune cookies and a peaceful New Year for 2016.
For Daniel, it’s business as usual.
He has organised an important WBO European lightweight title bout for Dublin’s Regency Hotel, near the airport on the north side of the city. It’s billed as ‘The Clash of the Clans’ — and little did Kinahan know that would very well come true. During the weigh-in on Friday, February 5, more than 300 people have gathered. Members of the Hutch gang, two dressed as Armed Response Officers from the Gardai, brandish AK-47 rifles and open up on the crowd. Two are seriously wounded and a third man, David Bryne, lies dead in a pool of blood. He’s the first cousin of ‘Fat’ Freddie Thomson. Daniel, the real target, escaped through a toilet window.
Things just got a whole lot worse.
Eddie Hutch senior is the brother of ‘The Monk’, has mostly kept out of the family business, and drives a taxi for a living. His son, Eddie junior, despite being smart, is deeply involved, so much so that when he appears on a nationally televised quiz programme, he wins, and has to come back to defend his crown. There’s a public outcry, and RTE, the Irish national broadcaster is deeply embarrassed. Another brother, Ross, appears in his place instead, solving the mess.
Three days after the Regency outrage, Eddie senior is gunned down. Tensions are running high. Although ‘The Monk’ hadn’t been seen in Dublin for months, and police believe he had moved to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, he appears at his brother’s funeral. Despite his disguise, he’s photographed alongside another man, Noel ‘Duck Egg’ Kirwan by press photographers. There’s a €1 million bounty on The Monk’s head — the Kinahans want him alive so they can torture him to death.
In March, Noel ‘Kingsize’ Duggan, a cigarette smuggler who works for the Hutchs is killed as he sat in his car. Then Martin O’Rourke is killed — and police believe he was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There is another innocent man killed too. In August, Trevor O’Neill, an employee of the Dublin council, took his wife and three children to Magaluf, Spain on holidays. He innocently and inadvertently spoke to a member of the Hutch gang there. That interaction was overseen, and O’Neill was shot five times in front of his family by a Kinahan gunman.
In April, Michael Barr, a man with links to dissident Republican groups in Northern Ireland, was shot dead in a pub. He has been a suspect in the Regency outrage. The Kinahan’s next target was Gareth Hutch, ‘The Monks’ nephew. He too was a suspect in the Regency shooting and Gardai had warned him he was on a hit list.
On July 1, David Douglas was gunned down outside his shop. He was believed to be the second suspect alongwith Kearns involved in the botched attack the previous year. And ‘Duck Egg’ Kirwan, the man photographed at the funeral? He’s shot dead four days before Christmas.
Despite Gardai ramping up surveillance, setting up armed checkpoints and hassling all known gang members, the killings continued into 2017. The crisis became so bad the drug feud quickly blew a hole in €90 million of overtime for the armed response units. Inside prison, ‘Del Boy’ Hutch was attacked twice. James Gately, a long-time front of Gary Hutch, is hit twice by pistol shots. A bulletproof vest saved him.
And in May, Michael Keogh isn’t so lucky. He’s a Kinahan associate whose speciality is making pipe bombs, and dies in a hail of bullets in an underground car park.
So far, the feud has killed a dozen men. There’s still a bounty on ‘The Monk’, wherever he may be. Police say that while the gang war has eased, it’s not over — both sides are simply taking more effort to ensure they’re protected at all times.
Mick O’Reilly is Gulf News’ Foreign Correspondent based in Madrid, Spain.
