December 5, 2023 • 31 mins
An enterprising Dublin drug dealer makes the most of a revolution sweeping across Europe’s criminal economy.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
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Speaker 2 (00:57):
Previously on Hot Money, I started looking into a murder
in a small Dutch town, the murder of a man
who was living secret life on the run from the
Iranian regime. And it's taken me to Ireland to a
safe house owned by the Kinnahans, the family at the
heart of Europe's most powerful cocaine cartel. But who are
(01:20):
the Kinnahans and why would drug traffickers be connected to
what looks like a political assassination. This isn't an easy
story to report because, for obvious reasons, I can't just
call up the main characters, crime bosses. They don't usually
take calls from journalists, so instead I need to find
the people who are trying to bring them down.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Heroin took everyone by surprise, took the criminals by surprise.
It took the on Garda Shircanna. The Irish police Force
took them by complete surprise.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
In nineteen seventy seven, Michael O'Sullivan had just joined the
Irish Police Force. He's in his early twenties and he's
grown a handle bar mustache and got himself a leather jacket.
He kind of looks a bit like Charles Bronson, but
more approachable, a bit friendlier, and as a young detective,
he soon finds himself on the front line of policing
a new type of problem because tons of cheap heroin
(02:20):
is flooding into Europe, including Dublin.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
This was a new ballgame. These were drug dealers on
the streets, street wise, in what we would call flat complexes,
in rundown areas where they would have lookouts, and it
was they're like fortresses and the problem was getting worse
and worse. It wouldn't be uncommon to have an entire family,
(02:45):
you know, four or five kids, all on drugs.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Michael can tell that the usual methods of policing, the
old ways, they're just not going to work. So he
comes up with a radical idea.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
I went to my superiors and suggested to them that look,
people could go in and buy the drugs with a
view to catching the drug dealer, and basically suggested that
I could do it. From similar background, I felt I
could easily blend in.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
What Michael was talking about. Here is an undercover sting,
and in nineteen eighties Island in the police that's just
not really the dune thing.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
My boss has told me. It was a crazy idea.
It was illegal, and if I didn't get myself arrested
or brought before the courts, i'd bring the police force
into discredit. It couldn't be done, and it wasn't to
be done.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Michael listens to his bosses, weighs up their advice, and
he ignores it. The way he tells the story of
this first sting, it sounds just like a scene from
a movie. He's already chosen a dealer, a dealer he's
been watching for a while, and one day, when he's
out on patrol, he decides to split off from his
colleagues and he goes out alone without telling them where
(03:57):
he's heading.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So I went into a flat complex and knocked on
the door and a guy came out. This big guy
stood at the door, and as I began to ask
him for drugs, he produced in his hand and I
was probably cut by surprise. I didn't really realize. I
didn't think it would work that fast, So I took
(04:18):
a deep breath and snatched the drugs from his hand
and produced my ID card. At the same time, he
looked at me in disbelief. He thought I was a
junkie trying to robin.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
It takes a second, but the man notices Michael's police
idea and then he realizes what's really going on.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
At this stage, he assumed that I'd back up, but
what he didn't realize was the backup had no idea
where I was. So he decided to cut his losses
and he ran back into his flat, and I followed
him on the way. He cut some drugs that were
on a table and threw them into a lighting fire.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Michael knows he needs the drugs as evidence, because that's
the whole point of the sting, so he stops. The
heroine is wrapped in this plastic and it's trying to melt.
Michael reaches his hand into the fire and pulls it out.
At the same time time the dealer is still desperately
trying to find a way out of the flat.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
He opened a back window of the ground floor flat,
and as he was halfway outed, I was holding onto
his leg.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
So here's Michael, one hand covered in melted plastic, the
other hand gripping the leg of a heroin dealer who's
dangling out of a ground floor window, and no one
knows where he is. He's got back up, but they've
lost him.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
A passing unit of the police who are trying to
look for me saw him hanging out the window and
realized where I was. It came down to that, had
he not gone out the window, it thinks could have
gone quite badly. It was a crazy thing to do.
Looking back in it, I wouldn't advise anyone to do it,
but you know, you're young and impulsive, and nobody planned
for it to go that way. I was admonished by
(05:58):
my bosses and told it was her brain. Don't do
it again.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
But Michael's risky move pays off. It takes a while,
but Eventually his bosses realize that he's onto something, and
soon enough he finds himself coming up against a new
force in Irish organized crime. It's a family that will
transform the drugs business, make their fortune and end up
some of the world's most wanted men. The family at
(06:26):
the heart of the Dubai Supercartel. I'm Miles Johnson from
the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. This is Hot Money,
Season two, The New Narcos, Episode two, Cocaine Ceo. I'm
(07:02):
trying to understand how a group of European drug traffickers
became some of the world's most successful criminal entrepreneurs because
their story is the story of a revolution, a revolution
that swept across Europe's criminal economy. And Michael, he's been
following all of this from the start. The Kinahans have
been in his sights since his early days on the
(07:23):
streets of Dublin, and it started with Christopher Kinahan better
known as Christie or the Dappadon.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Myself and Chris Canahan has most started working in drugs
around the same time, and our careers have sort of
gone in tandem. I was on one side of the
fence and he's on the other.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Michael first comes across Christy in the mid eighties. It's
at the height of Dublin's heroin problems.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
I was aware that there was somebody behind the distribution
network within Dublin. The name Christy Kinahan came up. I
had never heard of him. I had made some inquiries
and I'd heard that he was best described as a
fraudster and he would go around bouncing checks, you know,
he could talk to wasn't a real criminal, he was,
(08:12):
you know, a suave sort of a guy.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Michael starts looking into Christy Kinahan and he learns that
he grew up in a middle class family in Dublin.
He went to the same school that the writer James
Joyce had attended seventy years earlier when he was a kid.
Christie's family lived in the UK for a bit, and
he sometimes puts on an English accent. He's also acquired
some expensive tastes, sports cars, nice clothes, and luxury apartments.
(08:40):
As Michael watches him, he can tell us not just
bounce checks. Covering Christie's extravagant lifestyle is drug money and
Christy he seems to have come up with a new
distribution model. One that's different from the other heroine dealers.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
He had rented a luxury apartment away from grotty streets
and drug dealing and was using it as the nerve center.
He's paranoid, so he'd only trust himself, and he reckoned
he was in such a safe place and that he
was unknown that he could hold the drugs and maybe
(09:15):
get one or two trusted people to take them from him,
and they will go and cut it and distribute it.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
The location of Christie's base of operations is so unlikely
that Michael actually doubts it at first, but then he
sees Christy arriving at the block of flats.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Fortunately for us, he drove a flash red sports cart
and it's confirmed.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
It's nineteen eighty six and Michael's undercover sting operations are
by now well established. If Christie's holding heroin in that apartment,
that's where Michael wants to stage a sting.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
You just can't hang around a place for days and
with cameras and sit in another adjoining apartment complexes. You've
got to put yourself into a position. So we just decided, look,
let's go in as workmen, and myself and another guy
went in as workmen and carrying on our work tools.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Michael's with a colleague and they go inside the block
of flats. They're dressed as electricians. They start going around,
knocking on doors and asking residents if they can check
their lights.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
One or two of the residents asked us to try
and fix fridges and stuff. So we just sort of
ran with the flow and it worked.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
There in the corridor was Christie.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
He passed me in the hall. I saw him go
in and out and I realized who he was.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
So Michael calls him back up and braces himself to
go in.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
You don't know if somebody behind that door has a gun.
You don't know how many people are behind that door.
You could go in and a guy could be standing
there with a machine gun. A guy could be standing
with a handgun and get the drop on you. As
they would say, the adrenaline is flowing, you know, your
heart is racing. Anything could go wrong.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
The door opens, but it's not Christie on the other side.
It's another man. Mike On and his colleagues pull out
their search warren and they entered the flat. Where's Christy
At this point.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
He's sitting at a table eating a sandwich. Can still
see him sitting out looking as it was a big role.
He was eating a big salad roll or something. It
was still in his mouth as we came in the
door and knee he just he visibly paled and he
just he just froze. Really, he just froze. Yeah. I
(11:38):
told him we were the drug squad and with a
warrant to search the premises. And he put down the
sandwich and he said, I'm as sick as a parrot
for the English phrase. He said, is your name Sullivan?
I said it is. He said, I was told to
look out for you, and I said, well he should
(11:58):
have took that advice.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Did it. I worry you at all that he knew
who you were.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
When you're in the drugs business, when you're working against
the organized crime, if you're going to worry about your safety,
you're on the wrong job.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
After Michael arrests him, Christy Kinahan's charged. He admits to
owning the drugs and the cash and the fraudulent checks
that were found inside the apartment. He pleads guilty, and
while Christie works his way through the legal system, Michael
starts to get a sense of his character.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
You know, in court and traveling to court, he would
be trying to learn French or reading books. He thought
he was a step above everybody.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
He was.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Reasonably smart, but he was I suppose it's a bit
of a snob. Really, he wouldn't waste time and he'd
always look for opportunities.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
By the time Christie's trial comes around, his lawyers come
up with the defense. He says that his client is
committed to turning his life around, and he tells the
court that Christie's learning, He's learning French and Arabic, and
he's trying to improve himself. Michael is skeptical, but the
judge buys Chris this story, and then he gives him
six years in prison. Christy Kinahan is down, but he's
(13:15):
not out. A few years later, Michael's still doing drug enforcement.
One night, after work, he decides to go for a run.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And I glanced over my shoulder and I saw a
car following me, and so I ran through a series
of streets and I could see the car was still
following me, and I went around a corner and stopped
to tie my lace, and the car sped past me,
(13:45):
and I glanced at it, and I told to myself,
I swear that's Chris Connhan. I went back to the
office and I said, h'm after seeing Chris Connette. She
couldn't have done Yeah, So it came to pass that
he was out.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Christi Kinahan's out of prison and he's only just getting started.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
I'm gonna warn you right up front. I'm known to
go all over the place.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
So that's Derek Maltz. And Derek's loud, but he's not angry.
He just talks like this all the time. It's sort
of the same if he's ordering a pizza or arresting
a drug kingpin. Derek used to run the Special Operations
Division of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Speaker 6 (14:40):
When we signed up to be DA, we didn't sign
up to be firemen where the bell rings, you slide
down the pole and you go put out the fire.
We signed up to proactively infiltrate the biggest and baddest
criminals in the world.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Derek's been a source of mind for a couple of years.
It's been a couple of years where I've been having
to do a lot of networking with law enforcement agents
around the world because I was writing a book on
international organized crime. But the thing about police. There's no
online directory, and the way it works is this, you
meet someone like Derek, and if you're lucky, he'll introduce
(15:15):
you to someone else, and so it goes on, and
it's three these kind of connections. I've met police from
the US, France, the Netherlands, the UK Island and more.
In each agency they have their own culture, their own vibe.
And Derek, he couldn't mean more on brand for the DEA.
(15:35):
And maybe that's because it's pretty much in his blood.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
He worked thirty years my father in the DEA.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
My father did a lot of work with the heroin
traffickers in New York, you know, getting drugs from you know,
Italian organized crime. At the time, when I was thirteen
years old, my father actually took me out on a
surveillance following a female who was connected to a heroin fugitive.
And so he thought it was a good idea to
put a thirteen year old kid in the government vehicle,
(16:05):
follow into a high rise hotel in a very bad
area in New York City and send his kid into
the elevator with the target to see what apartments she
went into.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
So I guess my law enforcement.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
Career actually started when I was like between nine and
thirteen years old.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Derek's father was tackling the growing problems caused by heroin.
But by the time Derek started working for the DEA,
there was a different drug rapidly taking market share.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
America was getting completely bombarded with cocaine and crack and
just so many problems violence, crime, okay, and all of
the cocaine at that time was coming from Colombia.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Columbia has always been one of the biggest producers of coca,
the plant that cocaine is derived from. The cost of
growing and processing coca is low and the markups are huge.
The supply chain is controlled by powerful cortails.
Speaker 5 (16:58):
The cartels. They're in the business to make money.
Speaker 6 (17:01):
They run these organizations like a fortune five hundred company
in the sense of they want to maximize profits and
reduce risks.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
In the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, these Latin American
drug kingpins they captured the world's attention. Names you might
have heard of, like Pablo Escobar or El Chappo Gusman.
The American market for cocaine it got bigger, and the
cartels they became more and more powerful, so US law enforcement.
They ramped up their response.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
The DEA established a Kingpins strategy.
Speaker 6 (17:32):
The United States attorneys around America started engaging a lot more.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
We started getting enhanced sentencing.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
Guidelines for drug traffickers around America, and we started working
very closely with the Colombian National Police.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
It was a controversial strategy. Not everyone was comfortable with
the DA jumping into other countries and arresting people, but
it got results. Hundreds of cartel members were extradited from
Columbia to the US on cocaine trafficking charges, and it
made life for them really difficult. So the cartels pivoted
because moving cocaine loads into the US no longer seemed
(18:08):
as appealing as it used to be.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
You got to remember, the Colombians are like entrepreneurs, very
very smart. They studied their failures. They didn't want to
sit in American jails.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
They advanced their communications, they compartmentalized their operations, They insulated
themselves from prosecution in America.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
But to do this, the Colombian cartels needed a new market,
one which was not the United States, a place that
would not get people like Derek on their case. And
this is a key moment in Christy Kinahan's story, because
the market the Colombians choose, it's Western Europe, and.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
They started bombing Europe with massive amounts of cocaine. Like
I said, if you're in a business, there's really two
things you got to keep in mind. Increased profits reduce risk. Well,
cocaine trafficking in Europe was a home run for the cartels.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
So by the early naughties, the South American cartails are
busy building up trusted networks of distributors in Europe and
there are hubs emerging places filled with people eager to
do business with them. Amsterdam is the perfect base for
anyone who's looking to expand their criminal network. The first
thing's where it's situated. It's in the center of Western Europe,
(19:30):
and so they're regular flights and trains to anywhere in
the world. And secondly, it's a city that's close to
two of the world's largest container ports, Rotterdam and Antwerp,
and that's the critical infrastructure for bringing almost all goods
into Europe, including vast shipments of cocaine. At the same time,
European economic growth and integration was ramping up, borders are
(19:54):
coming down and the single currency, the Euro is coming together,
and broader globalization is making the world even smaller. During
its golden age, Amsterdam was a hub, and it was
a hub for diamonds, spices, and now it's becoming a
hub again because over the next few decades the cocaine
market will explode. In nineteen eighty six, less than five
(20:17):
tons of cocaine was seized in Europe, according to the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. But by the
mid nineties this has grown to around twenty five tons.
And then flash forward to twenty twenty one, they're now
seizing a record breaking two hundred and forty tons, almost
ten times more. And the thing is that's just a
tiny proportion of the actual amount that gets in, So
(20:40):
the true size of the market it's much much bigger.
Perhaps it's over one thousand tons a year, or maybe
even more.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Cocaine was seen as a rich man's drug. Young populations,
affluent population, disposable income people see cocaine as sexy. It's
great to have. We'll have a few drinks and we'll
take some cocaine and we'll party throughout the night. And
they would never stick a needle in their round They
probably wouldn't take an ecstasy pill because they wouldn't know
what's in it. But coke looks quite and clean and bright,
(21:12):
and you see it on the movies and that everyone's
doing it and it's great and it's I wouldn't really
get addictive. That's what people think. That's how it's marketed.
The reason Europe has such a large market is because
the money is there, the profits are there. No criminal
organization were to salt would not be involved in cocaine.
(21:32):
In other words, cocaine is the fuel by which organized
crime operates.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Derek says, the Colombian hotels immediately saw there was a
huge opportunity in Europe.
Speaker 6 (21:44):
So why do I want to sell If I'm a
cartel leader in Columbia, why do I want to sell
cocaine in America for twenty thousand dollars you know kilogram
when I could send it into Europe and make double triple.
And then when you look at Antwerp and Rotterdam and
look at the amount of maritime business that's being done,
how the hell are they going to be able to
(22:06):
properly monitor the vine that's coming into those ports. So
guess what drug traffic is transnational criminals are going to
take total advantage of weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and that's what
they've done.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
And so in the mid two thousands, Derek realizes that
the DA's strategy needs to change. They need a global
network just like the cartels are building. So they start
to work more closely with national law enforcement agencies. They
start to share more information and work jointly on more investigations.
Speaker 6 (22:38):
The command and control leadership for all of these international
drug traffic and organizations is all overseas.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
It's not in America.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
So how the hell are you going to do your
job if you don't work very closely and cooperatively collaboratively
with your partners in these countries all over the world. Okay,
so I made it a goal to kind of break
down walls, not only in the US but around the world.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
In the mid twenty tens, Christi Kinhan sets up a
consulting company and on the website there's a motto. I
take it as a kind of guiding principle for how
Christy built his empire. Being in the game is not
as important as staying ahead of it. But it's not
just strategy that helps him stay ahead of the game,
Christy turns out to be the right man in the
(23:36):
right place at the right time. Nineteen ninety two, Christy
gets out of prison just as a huge criminal opportunity
that Derek described is about to open up. Only one
year later, he's in trouble again, and this time it's
for stealing travelers checks from a bank. He's charged, he
gets out on bail, and then Christie skips the country
(23:58):
for one of those new European hubs, Amsterdam.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
A lot of Irish criminals meant it in Netherlands to
get away from the Irish police. It was suitable because
it was sufficiently far away from the UK, who were
quite proactive and Ireland. It was a two hour flight
an hour and a half flight maybe, and you were there.
Like most Irish criminals when they go to the Netherlands,
it opens up a new world for them. You were
(24:23):
in the league of wholesalers, or the organizers and the strategists.
It's all about the contacts. It's no different to business
from Amsterdam.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Christy continues to ship drugs into island in the UK
and it's now far harder for Michael and the Irish
police to keep tabs on what he's doing. Nineteen ninety seven.
Because of the outstanding charges against him, Christy rarely travels
back to Ireland, but there's one of them back home
that he can't miss. It's his father's funeral. He flies
back and he gets arrested and the police officer who
(24:56):
interrogates Christie at the station it's Michael So. More than
ten years after Michael first arrested him in the flat
in Dublin, they're back in the same room. Christy doesn't
want to talk. He's sit there staring at the wall
in silence. But there's something he just can't resist telling Michael.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
During the interview. He looked at me and he said,
you think you're so fucking smart? He said, I followed you.
He said, so, I gave him the red registration number
of the car that he followed me. I was the
last conversation I had done. Me didn't talk then after that,
but chose you his mindset. You know.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Christy goes back to prison for several years, and like
his last stretch inside, he uses the time strategically. He reads,
he studies, he takes courses in law, and works on
his languages, Dutch and Spanish. He even starts a degree.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Whereas most criminals will think of the next job, or
what'll I do when I get out. I bet you
I could do that robbery and I could get some money,
he would think further down the road, far more strategically.
He was always trying to look for angles and improve
himself and learned from his mistakes.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Two thousand and one, Christy gets out and he leaves
Ireland again for continental Europe.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
Would have been when Christopher Senior had only come out
of prison. That's when I would have first heard that
the Kinahan name.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Seamus Boland is Detective Chief Superintendent in the Irish Police.
Seamus and his colleagues, they've been trying to keep tabs
on Christy even though he's now far away from Ireland
and they can see he's becoming more global, more dangerous,
and more powerful.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
I would have been involved in investigations going back as
far as two thousand and three, significant investigations with significant
drug seizures which were associated with the Kinahan organized crime group.
So you know, the Kinnan organized crime group has been
the primary group for the last twenty twenty five years
(27:07):
that built the networks applying drugs and firearms dist jurisdiction
with Dot a DOT.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Over the years, Christie will be arrested again several times,
but he always seems to manage to get off on
relatively light sentences. For the police. It feels like Christie's
living up to his business mantra. He's staying one step
ahead of the game. Christian his partners build operations in Spain, Holland,
the UK, and An Island. But it goes wider than that.
(27:34):
There's this leaked diplomatic cable from the US embassy in
Sierra Leone. It's in two thousand and nine and it
contains intelligence about a Kinahan associate coming into the country
to help them ship drugs through Africa. And then Irish
police realize that Christi Kinahan's connections go much wider than
they ever could have imagined. Remember that morning in twenty sixteen.
(27:55):
We heard about it in episode one when the Dutch
murder broker is caught in a Kinahan safe house in Dublin.
The murder broker who's connected to the assassination of a
man who's been on the run from the Iranian government
for thirty years. So now we've got what looks like
a state sponsored hit the sort of thing usually carried
out by spies or special forces operatives, and it's connected
(28:19):
to the Kinahan cartel. In that moment, the Irish police
don't yet have all the information to grasp exactly what
it means, but it shows that Christi Kinahan, the man
who started out selling heroin in Dublin in a flat
in the nineteen eighties, has evolved into a different breed
of crime boss.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
What you're seeing there is such a close network of
people who obviously work together. That's how organized crime has
developed across Europe. So I think no different too small
companies that all of a sudden get bought up by
bigger companies, and all of a sudden there are multinational companies.
(28:59):
That's how the drug gangs have manifested. They're like a
business network, they're organized crime networks.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Christi Kinahan's network will reach its peak when Europe's most
powerful and dangerous criminals gather his son's wedding. But it's
a long way from Dublin to Dubai. To understand how
the supercartel was born, we have to look at an
important turning point in Christi Kinhan's criminal strategy. It's a
time when Christie's thinking about the future. He's got two sons,
(29:29):
Daniel and Christopher Junior, and they've got no criminal convictions.
They're clean, and perhaps Christy begins to think with his
sons by his side. Together they can take what began
as a tiny heroin hustle in a Dublin flat into
the international criminal stratosphere. Daniel, the eldest son, is being
(29:50):
groomed as his successor, but like all family businesses, they're
at their most vulnerable at a time of succession. His
power was challenged here in Dublin, and he was going
to lash out and make sure everyone knew who he was.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
You cannot go round like al Capone. You can, but
you'll only last so long.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
That's next time on Hot Money. Hot Money is a
production of The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It was
written and reported by me Myles Johnson, and if you've
(30:35):
got any leads or information about this story, you can
email me at new narcosat FT dot com. The series
producer is Peggy Sutton. Edith Russolo is the associate producer.
Fact checking is by Arthur Gompertz. Jason Gambrell and Amanda
k Wong are the mixing engineers, sound design from Jake Gorsky.
Jeremy Walmsley wrote the original music. Our editor is Sarah Nix,
(30:59):
and the executive producers are Jacob Goldstein and Cheryl Brumley.
Special thanks to Laura Clark, Alistair Macki Breen Turner, Jude Webber,
and rich Ward
Pushkin Just a quick note before we start today's show.
You can listen to Hot Money, the New Narcos ad
free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Find Pushkin Plus
on the Hot Money Show page in Apple Podcasts or
at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus. With your subscription, you'll
(00:36):
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Sign up in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
slash Plus.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Previously on Hot Money, I started looking into a murder
in a small Dutch town, the murder of a man
who was living secret life on the run from the
Iranian regime. And it's taken me to Ireland to a
safe house owned by the Kinnahans, the family at the
heart of Europe's most powerful cocaine cartel. But who are
(01:20):
the Kinnahans and why would drug traffickers be connected to
what looks like a political assassination. This isn't an easy
story to report because, for obvious reasons, I can't just
call up the main characters, crime bosses. They don't usually
take calls from journalists, so instead I need to find
the people who are trying to bring them down.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Heroin took everyone by surprise, took the criminals by surprise.
It took the on Garda Shircanna. The Irish police Force
took them by complete surprise.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
In nineteen seventy seven, Michael O'Sullivan had just joined the
Irish Police Force. He's in his early twenties and he's
grown a handle bar mustache and got himself a leather jacket.
He kind of looks a bit like Charles Bronson, but
more approachable, a bit friendlier, and as a young detective,
he soon finds himself on the front line of policing
a new type of problem because tons of cheap heroin
(02:20):
is flooding into Europe, including Dublin.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
This was a new ballgame. These were drug dealers on
the streets, street wise, in what we would call flat complexes,
in rundown areas where they would have lookouts, and it
was they're like fortresses and the problem was getting worse
and worse. It wouldn't be uncommon to have an entire family,
(02:45):
you know, four or five kids, all on drugs.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Michael can tell that the usual methods of policing, the
old ways, they're just not going to work. So he
comes up with a radical idea.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
I went to my superiors and suggested to them that look,
people could go in and buy the drugs with a
view to catching the drug dealer, and basically suggested that
I could do it. From similar background, I felt I
could easily blend in.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
What Michael was talking about. Here is an undercover sting,
and in nineteen eighties Island in the police that's just
not really the dune thing.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
My boss has told me. It was a crazy idea.
It was illegal, and if I didn't get myself arrested
or brought before the courts, i'd bring the police force
into discredit. It couldn't be done, and it wasn't to
be done.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Michael listens to his bosses, weighs up their advice, and
he ignores it. The way he tells the story of
this first sting, it sounds just like a scene from
a movie. He's already chosen a dealer, a dealer he's
been watching for a while, and one day, when he's
out on patrol, he decides to split off from his
colleagues and he goes out alone without telling them where
(03:57):
he's heading.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So I went into a flat complex and knocked on
the door and a guy came out. This big guy
stood at the door, and as I began to ask
him for drugs, he produced in his hand and I
was probably cut by surprise. I didn't really realize. I
didn't think it would work that fast, So I took
(04:18):
a deep breath and snatched the drugs from his hand
and produced my ID card. At the same time, he
looked at me in disbelief. He thought I was a
junkie trying to robin.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
It takes a second, but the man notices Michael's police
idea and then he realizes what's really going on.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
At this stage, he assumed that I'd back up, but
what he didn't realize was the backup had no idea
where I was. So he decided to cut his losses
and he ran back into his flat, and I followed
him on the way. He cut some drugs that were
on a table and threw them into a lighting fire.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Michael knows he needs the drugs as evidence, because that's
the whole point of the sting, so he stops. The
heroine is wrapped in this plastic and it's trying to melt.
Michael reaches his hand into the fire and pulls it out.
At the same time time the dealer is still desperately
trying to find a way out of the flat.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
He opened a back window of the ground floor flat,
and as he was halfway outed, I was holding onto
his leg.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
So here's Michael, one hand covered in melted plastic, the
other hand gripping the leg of a heroin dealer who's
dangling out of a ground floor window, and no one
knows where he is. He's got back up, but they've
lost him.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
A passing unit of the police who are trying to
look for me saw him hanging out the window and
realized where I was. It came down to that, had
he not gone out the window, it thinks could have
gone quite badly. It was a crazy thing to do.
Looking back in it, I wouldn't advise anyone to do it,
but you know, you're young and impulsive, and nobody planned
for it to go that way. I was admonished by
(05:58):
my bosses and told it was her brain. Don't do
it again.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
But Michael's risky move pays off. It takes a while,
but Eventually his bosses realize that he's onto something, and
soon enough he finds himself coming up against a new
force in Irish organized crime. It's a family that will
transform the drugs business, make their fortune and end up
some of the world's most wanted men. The family at
(06:26):
the heart of the Dubai Supercartel. I'm Miles Johnson from
the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. This is Hot Money,
Season two, The New Narcos, Episode two, Cocaine Ceo. I'm
(07:02):
trying to understand how a group of European drug traffickers
became some of the world's most successful criminal entrepreneurs because
their story is the story of a revolution, a revolution
that swept across Europe's criminal economy. And Michael, he's been
following all of this from the start. The Kinahans have
been in his sights since his early days on the
(07:23):
streets of Dublin, and it started with Christopher Kinahan better
known as Christie or the Dappadon.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Myself and Chris Canahan has most started working in drugs
around the same time, and our careers have sort of
gone in tandem. I was on one side of the
fence and he's on the other.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Michael first comes across Christy in the mid eighties. It's
at the height of Dublin's heroin problems.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
I was aware that there was somebody behind the distribution
network within Dublin. The name Christy Kinahan came up. I
had never heard of him. I had made some inquiries
and I'd heard that he was best described as a
fraudster and he would go around bouncing checks, you know,
he could talk to wasn't a real criminal, he was,
(08:12):
you know, a suave sort of a guy.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Michael starts looking into Christy Kinahan and he learns that
he grew up in a middle class family in Dublin.
He went to the same school that the writer James
Joyce had attended seventy years earlier when he was a kid.
Christie's family lived in the UK for a bit, and
he sometimes puts on an English accent. He's also acquired
some expensive tastes, sports cars, nice clothes, and luxury apartments.
(08:40):
As Michael watches him, he can tell us not just
bounce checks. Covering Christie's extravagant lifestyle is drug money and
Christy he seems to have come up with a new
distribution model. One that's different from the other heroine dealers.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
He had rented a luxury apartment away from grotty streets
and drug dealing and was using it as the nerve center.
He's paranoid, so he'd only trust himself, and he reckoned
he was in such a safe place and that he
was unknown that he could hold the drugs and maybe
(09:15):
get one or two trusted people to take them from him,
and they will go and cut it and distribute it.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
The location of Christie's base of operations is so unlikely
that Michael actually doubts it at first, but then he
sees Christy arriving at the block of flats.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Fortunately for us, he drove a flash red sports cart
and it's confirmed.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
It's nineteen eighty six and Michael's undercover sting operations are
by now well established. If Christie's holding heroin in that apartment,
that's where Michael wants to stage a sting.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
You just can't hang around a place for days and
with cameras and sit in another adjoining apartment complexes. You've
got to put yourself into a position. So we just decided, look,
let's go in as workmen, and myself and another guy
went in as workmen and carrying on our work tools.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Michael's with a colleague and they go inside the block
of flats. They're dressed as electricians. They start going around,
knocking on doors and asking residents if they can check
their lights.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
One or two of the residents asked us to try
and fix fridges and stuff. So we just sort of
ran with the flow and it worked.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
There in the corridor was Christie.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
He passed me in the hall. I saw him go
in and out and I realized who he was.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
So Michael calls him back up and braces himself to
go in.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
You don't know if somebody behind that door has a gun.
You don't know how many people are behind that door.
You could go in and a guy could be standing
there with a machine gun. A guy could be standing
with a handgun and get the drop on you. As
they would say, the adrenaline is flowing, you know, your
heart is racing. Anything could go wrong.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
The door opens, but it's not Christie on the other side.
It's another man. Mike On and his colleagues pull out
their search warren and they entered the flat. Where's Christy
At this point.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
He's sitting at a table eating a sandwich. Can still
see him sitting out looking as it was a big role.
He was eating a big salad roll or something. It
was still in his mouth as we came in the
door and knee he just he visibly paled and he
just he just froze. Really, he just froze. Yeah. I
(11:38):
told him we were the drug squad and with a
warrant to search the premises. And he put down the
sandwich and he said, I'm as sick as a parrot
for the English phrase. He said, is your name Sullivan?
I said it is. He said, I was told to
look out for you, and I said, well he should
(11:58):
have took that advice.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Did it. I worry you at all that he knew
who you were.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
When you're in the drugs business, when you're working against
the organized crime, if you're going to worry about your safety,
you're on the wrong job.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
After Michael arrests him, Christy Kinahan's charged. He admits to
owning the drugs and the cash and the fraudulent checks
that were found inside the apartment. He pleads guilty, and
while Christie works his way through the legal system, Michael
starts to get a sense of his character.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
You know, in court and traveling to court, he would
be trying to learn French or reading books. He thought
he was a step above everybody.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
He was.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Reasonably smart, but he was I suppose it's a bit
of a snob. Really, he wouldn't waste time and he'd
always look for opportunities.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
By the time Christie's trial comes around, his lawyers come
up with the defense. He says that his client is
committed to turning his life around, and he tells the
court that Christie's learning, He's learning French and Arabic, and
he's trying to improve himself. Michael is skeptical, but the
judge buys Chris this story, and then he gives him
six years in prison. Christy Kinahan is down, but he's
(13:15):
not out. A few years later, Michael's still doing drug enforcement.
One night, after work, he decides to go for a run.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And I glanced over my shoulder and I saw a
car following me, and so I ran through a series
of streets and I could see the car was still
following me, and I went around a corner and stopped
to tie my lace, and the car sped past me,
(13:45):
and I glanced at it, and I told to myself,
I swear that's Chris Connhan. I went back to the
office and I said, h'm after seeing Chris Connette. She
couldn't have done Yeah, So it came to pass that
he was out.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Christi Kinahan's out of prison and he's only just getting started.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
I'm gonna warn you right up front. I'm known to
go all over the place.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
So that's Derek Maltz. And Derek's loud, but he's not angry.
He just talks like this all the time. It's sort
of the same if he's ordering a pizza or arresting
a drug kingpin. Derek used to run the Special Operations
Division of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Speaker 6 (14:40):
When we signed up to be DA, we didn't sign
up to be firemen where the bell rings, you slide
down the pole and you go put out the fire.
We signed up to proactively infiltrate the biggest and baddest
criminals in the world.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Derek's been a source of mind for a couple of years.
It's been a couple of years where I've been having
to do a lot of networking with law enforcement agents
around the world because I was writing a book on
international organized crime. But the thing about police. There's no
online directory, and the way it works is this, you
meet someone like Derek, and if you're lucky, he'll introduce
(15:15):
you to someone else, and so it goes on, and
it's three these kind of connections. I've met police from
the US, France, the Netherlands, the UK Island and more.
In each agency they have their own culture, their own vibe.
And Derek, he couldn't mean more on brand for the DEA.
(15:35):
And maybe that's because it's pretty much in his blood.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
He worked thirty years my father in the DEA.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
My father did a lot of work with the heroin
traffickers in New York, you know, getting drugs from you know,
Italian organized crime. At the time, when I was thirteen
years old, my father actually took me out on a
surveillance following a female who was connected to a heroin fugitive.
And so he thought it was a good idea to
put a thirteen year old kid in the government vehicle,
(16:05):
follow into a high rise hotel in a very bad
area in New York City and send his kid into
the elevator with the target to see what apartments she
went into.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
So I guess my law enforcement.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
Career actually started when I was like between nine and
thirteen years old.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Derek's father was tackling the growing problems caused by heroin.
But by the time Derek started working for the DEA,
there was a different drug rapidly taking market share.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
America was getting completely bombarded with cocaine and crack and
just so many problems violence, crime, okay, and all of
the cocaine at that time was coming from Colombia.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Columbia has always been one of the biggest producers of coca,
the plant that cocaine is derived from. The cost of
growing and processing coca is low and the markups are huge.
The supply chain is controlled by powerful cortails.
Speaker 5 (16:58):
The cartels. They're in the business to make money.
Speaker 6 (17:01):
They run these organizations like a fortune five hundred company
in the sense of they want to maximize profits and
reduce risks.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
In the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, these Latin American
drug kingpins they captured the world's attention. Names you might
have heard of, like Pablo Escobar or El Chappo Gusman.
The American market for cocaine it got bigger, and the
cartels they became more and more powerful, so US law enforcement.
They ramped up their response.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
The DEA established a Kingpins strategy.
Speaker 6 (17:32):
The United States attorneys around America started engaging a lot more.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
We started getting enhanced sentencing.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
Guidelines for drug traffickers around America, and we started working
very closely with the Colombian National Police.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
It was a controversial strategy. Not everyone was comfortable with
the DA jumping into other countries and arresting people, but
it got results. Hundreds of cartel members were extradited from
Columbia to the US on cocaine trafficking charges, and it
made life for them really difficult. So the cartels pivoted
because moving cocaine loads into the US no longer seemed
(18:08):
as appealing as it used to be.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
You got to remember, the Colombians are like entrepreneurs, very
very smart. They studied their failures. They didn't want to
sit in American jails.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
They advanced their communications, they compartmentalized their operations, They insulated
themselves from prosecution in America.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
But to do this, the Colombian cartels needed a new market,
one which was not the United States, a place that
would not get people like Derek on their case. And
this is a key moment in Christy Kinahan's story, because
the market the Colombians choose, it's Western Europe, and.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
They started bombing Europe with massive amounts of cocaine. Like
I said, if you're in a business, there's really two
things you got to keep in mind. Increased profits reduce risk. Well,
cocaine trafficking in Europe was a home run for the cartels.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
So by the early naughties, the South American cartails are
busy building up trusted networks of distributors in Europe and
there are hubs emerging places filled with people eager to
do business with them. Amsterdam is the perfect base for
anyone who's looking to expand their criminal network. The first
thing's where it's situated. It's in the center of Western Europe,
(19:30):
and so they're regular flights and trains to anywhere in
the world. And secondly, it's a city that's close to
two of the world's largest container ports, Rotterdam and Antwerp,
and that's the critical infrastructure for bringing almost all goods
into Europe, including vast shipments of cocaine. At the same time,
European economic growth and integration was ramping up, borders are
(19:54):
coming down and the single currency, the Euro is coming together,
and broader globalization is making the world even smaller. During
its golden age, Amsterdam was a hub, and it was
a hub for diamonds, spices, and now it's becoming a
hub again because over the next few decades the cocaine
market will explode. In nineteen eighty six, less than five
(20:17):
tons of cocaine was seized in Europe, according to the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. But by the
mid nineties this has grown to around twenty five tons.
And then flash forward to twenty twenty one, they're now
seizing a record breaking two hundred and forty tons, almost
ten times more. And the thing is that's just a
tiny proportion of the actual amount that gets in, So
(20:40):
the true size of the market it's much much bigger.
Perhaps it's over one thousand tons a year, or maybe
even more.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Cocaine was seen as a rich man's drug. Young populations,
affluent population, disposable income people see cocaine as sexy. It's
great to have. We'll have a few drinks and we'll
take some cocaine and we'll party throughout the night. And
they would never stick a needle in their round They
probably wouldn't take an ecstasy pill because they wouldn't know
what's in it. But coke looks quite and clean and bright,
(21:12):
and you see it on the movies and that everyone's
doing it and it's great and it's I wouldn't really
get addictive. That's what people think. That's how it's marketed.
The reason Europe has such a large market is because
the money is there, the profits are there. No criminal
organization were to salt would not be involved in cocaine.
(21:32):
In other words, cocaine is the fuel by which organized
crime operates.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Derek says, the Colombian hotels immediately saw there was a
huge opportunity in Europe.
Speaker 6 (21:44):
So why do I want to sell If I'm a
cartel leader in Columbia, why do I want to sell
cocaine in America for twenty thousand dollars you know kilogram
when I could send it into Europe and make double triple.
And then when you look at Antwerp and Rotterdam and
look at the amount of maritime business that's being done,
how the hell are they going to be able to
(22:06):
properly monitor the vine that's coming into those ports. So
guess what drug traffic is transnational criminals are going to
take total advantage of weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and that's what
they've done.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
And so in the mid two thousands, Derek realizes that
the DA's strategy needs to change. They need a global
network just like the cartels are building. So they start
to work more closely with national law enforcement agencies. They
start to share more information and work jointly on more investigations.
Speaker 6 (22:38):
The command and control leadership for all of these international
drug traffic and organizations is all overseas.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
It's not in America.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
So how the hell are you going to do your
job if you don't work very closely and cooperatively collaboratively
with your partners in these countries all over the world. Okay,
so I made it a goal to kind of break
down walls, not only in the US but around the world.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
In the mid twenty tens, Christi Kinhan sets up a
consulting company and on the website there's a motto. I
take it as a kind of guiding principle for how
Christy built his empire. Being in the game is not
as important as staying ahead of it. But it's not
just strategy that helps him stay ahead of the game,
Christy turns out to be the right man in the
(23:36):
right place at the right time. Nineteen ninety two, Christy
gets out of prison just as a huge criminal opportunity
that Derek described is about to open up. Only one
year later, he's in trouble again, and this time it's
for stealing travelers checks from a bank. He's charged, he
gets out on bail, and then Christie skips the country
(23:58):
for one of those new European hubs, Amsterdam.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
A lot of Irish criminals meant it in Netherlands to
get away from the Irish police. It was suitable because
it was sufficiently far away from the UK, who were
quite proactive and Ireland. It was a two hour flight
an hour and a half flight maybe, and you were there.
Like most Irish criminals when they go to the Netherlands,
it opens up a new world for them. You were
(24:23):
in the league of wholesalers, or the organizers and the strategists.
It's all about the contacts. It's no different to business
from Amsterdam.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Christy continues to ship drugs into island in the UK
and it's now far harder for Michael and the Irish
police to keep tabs on what he's doing. Nineteen ninety seven.
Because of the outstanding charges against him, Christy rarely travels
back to Ireland, but there's one of them back home
that he can't miss. It's his father's funeral. He flies
back and he gets arrested and the police officer who
(24:56):
interrogates Christie at the station it's Michael So. More than
ten years after Michael first arrested him in the flat
in Dublin, they're back in the same room. Christy doesn't
want to talk. He's sit there staring at the wall
in silence. But there's something he just can't resist telling Michael.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
During the interview. He looked at me and he said,
you think you're so fucking smart? He said, I followed you.
He said, so, I gave him the red registration number
of the car that he followed me. I was the
last conversation I had done. Me didn't talk then after that,
but chose you his mindset. You know.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Christy goes back to prison for several years, and like
his last stretch inside, he uses the time strategically. He reads,
he studies, he takes courses in law, and works on
his languages, Dutch and Spanish. He even starts a degree.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Whereas most criminals will think of the next job, or
what'll I do when I get out. I bet you
I could do that robbery and I could get some money,
he would think further down the road, far more strategically.
He was always trying to look for angles and improve
himself and learned from his mistakes.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Two thousand and one, Christy gets out and he leaves
Ireland again for continental Europe.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
Would have been when Christopher Senior had only come out
of prison. That's when I would have first heard that
the Kinahan name.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Seamus Boland is Detective Chief Superintendent in the Irish Police.
Seamus and his colleagues, they've been trying to keep tabs
on Christy even though he's now far away from Ireland
and they can see he's becoming more global, more dangerous,
and more powerful.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
I would have been involved in investigations going back as
far as two thousand and three, significant investigations with significant
drug seizures which were associated with the Kinahan organized crime group.
So you know, the Kinnan organized crime group has been
the primary group for the last twenty twenty five years
(27:07):
that built the networks applying drugs and firearms dist jurisdiction
with Dot a DOT.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Over the years, Christie will be arrested again several times,
but he always seems to manage to get off on
relatively light sentences. For the police. It feels like Christie's
living up to his business mantra. He's staying one step
ahead of the game. Christian his partners build operations in Spain, Holland,
the UK, and An Island. But it goes wider than that.
(27:34):
There's this leaked diplomatic cable from the US embassy in
Sierra Leone. It's in two thousand and nine and it
contains intelligence about a Kinahan associate coming into the country
to help them ship drugs through Africa. And then Irish
police realize that Christi Kinahan's connections go much wider than
they ever could have imagined. Remember that morning in twenty sixteen.
(27:55):
We heard about it in episode one when the Dutch
murder broker is caught in a Kinahan safe house in Dublin.
The murder broker who's connected to the assassination of a
man who's been on the run from the Iranian government
for thirty years. So now we've got what looks like
a state sponsored hit the sort of thing usually carried
out by spies or special forces operatives, and it's connected
(28:19):
to the Kinahan cartel. In that moment, the Irish police
don't yet have all the information to grasp exactly what
it means, but it shows that Christi Kinahan, the man
who started out selling heroin in Dublin in a flat
in the nineteen eighties, has evolved into a different breed
of crime boss.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
What you're seeing there is such a close network of
people who obviously work together. That's how organized crime has
developed across Europe. So I think no different too small
companies that all of a sudden get bought up by
bigger companies, and all of a sudden there are multinational companies.
(28:59):
That's how the drug gangs have manifested. They're like a
business network, they're organized crime networks.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Christi Kinahan's network will reach its peak when Europe's most
powerful and dangerous criminals gather his son's wedding. But it's
a long way from Dublin to Dubai. To understand how
the supercartel was born, we have to look at an
important turning point in Christi Kinhan's criminal strategy. It's a
time when Christie's thinking about the future. He's got two sons,
(29:29):
Daniel and Christopher Junior, and they've got no criminal convictions.
They're clean, and perhaps Christy begins to think with his
sons by his side. Together they can take what began
as a tiny heroin hustle in a Dublin flat into
the international criminal stratosphere. Daniel, the eldest son, is being
(29:50):
groomed as his successor, but like all family businesses, they're
at their most vulnerable at a time of succession. His
power was challenged here in Dublin, and he was going
to lash out and make sure everyone knew who he was.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
You cannot go round like al Capone. You can, but
you'll only last so long.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
That's next time on Hot Money. Hot Money is a
production of The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It was
written and reported by me Myles Johnson, and if you've
(30:35):
got any leads or information about this story, you can
email me at new narcosat FT dot com. The series
producer is Peggy Sutton. Edith Russolo is the associate producer.
Fact checking is by Arthur Gompertz. Jason Gambrell and Amanda
k Wong are the mixing engineers, sound design from Jake Gorsky.
Jeremy Walmsley wrote the original music. Our editor is Sarah Nix,
(30:59):
and the executive producers are Jacob Goldstein and Cheryl Brumley.
Special thanks to Laura Clark, Alistair Macki Breen Turner, Jude Webber,
and rich Ward
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