December 26, 2023 • 33 mins
Law enforcement cuts off the Kinahan cartel, and a little red notebook in the back of a car might finally reveal who killed the electrician in Almere.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
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(00:40):
p per month. Currently only available on iOS. There's a
link in the show notes. Previously on Hot Money, the
pressure on Daniel Kinahan is rising. His partners in the
Dubai supercartel are starting to fall, and police around the
world are working on a secret plan to take him
(01:01):
down for good. It's the morning of April twelfth, twenty
twenty two, and reporters and crews arrive at a press
conference in Dublin that's been called by the Irish Police. Officially,
there'll be an update on how law enforcement agencies are
working together to collaborate against international organized crime, but it's
(01:22):
a bit vague, perhaps suspiciously vague, and journalists they're starting
to speculate about what this press conference is really about.
Behind the scenes. John O'Driscoll is getting nervous. John's assistant
Commissioner in charge of Serious organized crime. Ever since his
meeting with US officials three years before, he's been working
(01:43):
on a single objective. And the press conference this morning
in Dublin it's going to be the moment he finally
gets to announce it to the world. But John knows
that if work gets out, it could all fall apart.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
He's chosen the venue carefully.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I said that, beyond any doubt, it was not going
to take place in those rooms that we may have
had press conferences relate to the ken Hens previously.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Instead, it would take place in Dublin City Hall. It's
the right sort of setting for a historic announcement. Marble flows,
huge classical pillars and statues on ancient Roman style plints.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
The holding of the event in City Hall was important,
first of all because it is that one for building
that it is, but also it is situated in south
inner city Dublin, which is where the Kenhn organization emerged from.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Quietly, senior officials from various foreign police forces have been
flying into Dublin. People from the US Treasury, DA and
Customs and Border protection officials from Europole and the UK's
National Crime Agency, including Deputy Director of Investigations Matt Horn.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
We derived the day before from the UK and had
been extremely well looked after by the GUARDA from the airport,
and you know they were keeping a very close eye
on ask to make sure that all the all of
us representatives of the international law enforcement community were sort
well looks after and well protected.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
And despite all these high profile police officers arriving in
Dublin at exactly the same time, John's been able to
keep things under wraps. Everyone's now seated, The whole falls
quiet in anticipation, and John walks out onto the stage.
Within minutes, the kinner Hands will become some of the
most wanted men on the planet. I'm Miles Johnson and
(03:43):
from the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. This is hot
money The New Narcos, Episode eight, The Red Notebook. Back
(04:12):
when I started at the FT as a trainee reporter
fifteen years ago, I never expected I'd end up writing
about organized crime. We covered things like the stock market
and mergers and acquisitions. There was this very clear boundary
back then between the world. We wrote about the world
of business, CEOs and politicians and the underworld, but something's
(04:35):
changed since then. The line between criminal activity and state
backed enterprise, between big business and gangsters has become fuzzier.
We live in a time where some heads of state
increasingly act like crime bosses, and the crime bosses they
act like the heads of multinational companies. It could be
a world leader investing billions into startups and tech companies,
(05:00):
but at the same time ordering the murder of dissidents abroad.
It could be North Korean state hackers stealing bitcoins to
fun missile programs, or Emmeinin backed tycoons using mercenary armies
to mine for gold in Africa. Or it could be
a cocaine cartel hiding out in Dubai while carrying out
contract killings in Europe for a sanctioned regime. It's all
(05:23):
part of the rise of a new type of criminal boss,
one backed by authoritarian governments. I called them state backed gangsters,
and they're thriving at a time when the world is
becoming more fragmented and more chaotic. Reporting on the Dubai supercartel,
I've discovered that European drug traffickers have been taking advantage
(05:45):
of the same money laundering channels that Iran uses to
evade Western sanctions. That seems to be the reason why
international criminals have become unlikely bedfellows with a theocratic regime.
That press conference that John's arranged, he knows it could
be the beginning of the end for the supercartel. But
before we get to that, I want to take a
(06:07):
little detour because there's an important question from the start
of this series that we still don't have an answer to.
The murder Broker was convicted for arranging the assassination of Alimtamed,
the electrician who was on the runt from Iran, but
no one has ever been able to find out who
in Iran gave the murder broker his orders. And enjoying
(06:29):
the reporting of this series, I came across something that
might help us get one step closer. It was a
case that revealed a ton of new information about the
way that Iran secretly pursues its enemies in Europe, people
like Alim Tamed. And there's someone I want to talk
to because he was directly involved in that case, someone
(06:50):
who has first hand experience of the long history of
violence against enemies of the Iranian regime wherever they are
in the world. Husseyin Aberdini was born in Iran, but
he now lives in London. He's in his late fifties
and he's quietly spoken that he's been fighting for most
of his life.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
I have been with the resistance over three decades now,
nearly four decades.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
In the spring of nineteen ninety, Hussein was a young
activist and he was in Turkey. He says he traveled
there to try and stop the deportation of Iranian refugees
who'd crossed the border illegally. One day in Istanbul, he's
in a car with two colleagues. They're on the motorway
when suddenly something blocks the road ahead.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
The traffic slows down. Hussein's up front, sitting next to
the driver, and all.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Of a sudden we heard, you know, the sound of bullets.
They riddled our car from the bag.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Hussein barely has time to take in that someone is
shooting at them when a car smashes into the front
of their vehicle.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
They can't drive away and.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Another car pinned us from behind. It was then which
I realized, you know, this was this was an assassination
or kidnapping.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
A man jumps out of the vehicle in front, the
one that's just plowed into their car.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
He's holding a revolver.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
And it was only I think a couple of meters
before he reached our car. I tried to do something.
There was a briefcase belonging to my female colleague and
sitting the back of the car, so I just took dad,
opened the door and went to stop him.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
He's clutching the briefcase like a shield as the man
starts shooting.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
First bullet hit my chest and I didn't know how
many bullets, you know, I received then, and I just
fell down, fell down in the street.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Saint's lying on the ground, bleeding, and he can see
the man walk up to him. He's preparing to take
a final shot, but nothing happens.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
The bullet jammed and the muzzle of the gun.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
That's a Saint's first lucky break. The traffic starts to
move again, and the assassin take off. Hussein desperately needs
to get to the hospital, but the car he was
in is smashed up, and everyone else on the motorway
they seemed to be trying to run away as quickly
as they can.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
I remember very vaguely that my colleague threw herself, you know,
in front of one of the cars, and there was
a taxi which has stopped and I was put at
the back of the taxi and I just got unconscious.
The hospital was only three minutes away. If it was
further than that, I wouldn't make it.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Hussein fell into a coma. It would be fifty days
before he woke up. He was told that one bullet
had passed very close to his heart and another had
destroyed his liver. But even at the hospital he's not safe.
The killers they come back, and this time they're posing
as his friends.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
But my true friends arrived and they were told, you
know that there are other people who wanted to come
and see me. And then those people escaped from the
scene when they realized, you know, there were people, my
true friends, you know, we're there.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
That's the same second stroke of luck, and there'll be
a third one as well. When the killers call up,
pretending to be the police, they tell the hospital staff
that they know Hussein is now conscious and they want
to interview him about what happened.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
But the president of Turkey in those days was Tolgodozol
and his mother, you know, was in the same hospital.
The president wanted to come and visit his mother, and
they sailed off the whole area hospital and they realized
there was another branch of police who wanted to come
and see me, and they found out there was a
(10:51):
Bogos call. It was the Ranian regime who wanted to
get rid of me because they didn't want me to speak.
That was very pure luck.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
That was more than thirty years ago. Hussein tells me
he's still affected every day by the damaged onto his
liver in that attack. He's one of the rare survivors
of an assassination attempt by the Iranian regime. Several of
his friends and colleagues have been murdered since then. Today,
Hussain is a senior member of Iran's main foreign opposition group,
(11:24):
the National Council of Resistance of Iran or the NCRI.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
SO the main objective of the National Council of Resistance
of Iran is to establish a democratic and the secular
government in Iran. Its main principle, of course, has been
against any dictatorship, whether there's the formula dictatorship of the
Shah or the present medieval dictatorship of the Mullahs.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
The NCRI, it's an umbrella organization, and one of the
largest groups within it is called the People's Mojahdeen Organization
of Iran, known by its Farsi initials me e K
now the MEK, it hasn't always had the West's approval.
It was implicated in several terrorist attacks against Iran, including
the nineteen eighty one bombing that Tehran claimed was carried
(12:12):
out by Ali matamed the Quiet Electrician.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
In the Netherlands.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
From nineteen ninety seven to twenty twelve, the mk was
designated as a terror organization by the US government, But
over the past decade it's refashioned itself and now it's
a pretty influential opposition voice on Iran. But for all
its acceptance by Western powers, the NCRI remains a top
target of the Iranian regime. In June twenty eighteen, Hussain
(12:39):
and his colleagues are in Paris. They're holding a huge meeting,
a rally called the Free Iran World Summit.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
Tens of thousands of Iranians with many non Iranian supporters
of the resistance who came from sixty seven different countries
throughout the ward.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Dozens of foreign politicians are invited as well, and everyone
convenes in a vast conference center. It's only afterwards the
Hussain finds out what very nearly happened.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
I think it was on the first of July. The
next day that was told by a friend that the
Belgian Featheral police, you know, they had arrested two Iranians
who are trying, you know, to bring a bomb.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Belgian police had arrested two Iranians who were on their
way to the Paris conference center with a bomb. It's
another lucky escape for Hussein and hundreds of other people.
And as police investigate the failed bomb plot, they're going
to discover something that I believe could shed new light
on the murder of Alimtomed. It's the most important discovery
(13:41):
in decades about how Iran targets its enemies abroad. And
this time the clues aren't just glimpses, hints or encryptied messages.
They're in a battered, red notebook filled with handwritten notes,
sitting in the back of a car. So Hussein and
(14:13):
his colleagues they discover that someone had tried to plant
a bomb at the rally in Paris, and at the
same time, police in Germany arrest an Iranian man on
a highway in Bavaria. His name is Assa Dolla Asadi
and officially he's the third councilor of the Iranian Embassy
in Vienna. He arrived in Europe in twenty fourteen, but
(14:35):
in reality he's a top spy for Iran's Ministry of
Intelligence and Security. It's Iran's equivalent of the CIA or
MI six. Assadi is running a network of agents across Europe,
meeting them in cafes in small medieval towns and handing
over secret instructions or bundles of cash. And months before
the Paris rally, he traveled to Tehran, returning to Europe
(14:59):
with a sophisticated bomb hidden in his diplomatic luggage. The
bombs made from an explosive known as Tatp or Mother
of Satan, extremely volatile. Asardi carries it on too Luxembourg
and hands it over to his agents. In this part
of the story, it's a bit less like a Lacarian
novel because the venue he chooses it's a pizza hut.
(15:22):
He gives them the bomb with instructions for planting it
at the Paris rally, and the code word he uses
is PlayStation. But what Asardi doesn't know is that European
intelligence agencies have been watching his every move and know
exactly what he's been planning. They even disabled the airport
security scanner so he could get through. The two agents
(15:42):
are arrested as they travel from Brussels to Paris. Assardi
is pulled over by the police on a motorway in Germany,
and in the back of his car they find a battered,
red notebook filled with handwritten notes, notes that reveal that
Asardi was involved in way more than one bomb plot.
Assadi has listed hundreds of different meetings with agents across Europe.
(16:06):
He's itemized cash payments he's made to spies, and he's
listed more than two hundred places he's visited as part
of his work in eleven different countries. Because as Sardi,
according to the findings of a Belgian criminal court, is
part of a secret unit of Iranian foreign intelligence, a
sort of murder squad in Europe. It's called Department three
(16:26):
one two and its role is to kill opponents of
the regime abroad. There's not much public information about Department
three one two, but what we do know it's pretty terrifying.
It's thought to be a top secret unit that specializes
in spying on human rights activists, journalists and others who
(16:46):
the Iranian regime believed to be a threat, but was
Ali Mtummed one of their targets. We know that Assardi
arrived in his new job in June twenty fourteen, a
little over a year before Alie Mtummd was killed outside
his house in ol Mayor. It was the first successful
targeted assassination carried out by Iran in Western Europe in
(17:07):
over twenty three years. And then two years later, in
twenty seventeen, while Assardi was still free, another Iranian opposition.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Member was gunned down in the Netherlands.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
So we can say that Assadi arrives in Vienna in
late twenty fourteen and then suddenly Iran is linked to
several assassinations in Europe. This isn't conclusive evidence, but according
to the Belgian criminal court documents targeting dissidents, that was
Assadi's job, so it makes sense that he would at
(17:40):
least be a suspect in the Matamad murder. And we
also know that Assadi he was reporting into really top
people in Iran, including the Deputy Minister of Intelligence After
his arrest for the bomb plot, Assardi's put on trial
in Belgium and he gets prison visits from some of
Iran's most senior spies and other officials from its foreign ministry.
(18:00):
They clearly cared a lot about this case. The criminal
case against Assadi was brought by the Belgian government, but
there were also twenty five five others who joined as
private plaintiffs. They were all at the Paris rally, and
Hussein was one of them, and it gave him access
to all the prosecution's evidence. He sent me the files.
This is hundreds of pages of documents in several European languages,
(18:23):
and there's also extracts from Asardi's red notebook. And there's
something else, something that I think could be important. Assardi's
job meant that he had to travel a lot on
work trips across Europe to meet with his various agents.
And it turns out that even spies used booking dot Com,
the huge online travel agent, to book their hotels, or
at least Assadi did, and the details of all those
(18:46):
bookings they're in the files. So I'm sat here in
the offices of the Financial Times looking.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
At these records.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Every hotel Assadi stayed in over his four years operating
in Europe. For some of the bookings he used his
official Iranian Foreign Ministry email address. For others it was
burner accounts from Yahoo and Gmail. I should have met
his agents in some pretty low key locations, and he
often seemed to book two hotels in different places for
(19:15):
the same night, maybe thinking it would throw off anyone
who was following him. In the records, they do show
that he traveled to the Netherlands on the sixth of
September twenty sixteen, less than a year after Mtammad was murdered.
He stayed at the Best Western in the Hague for
one night. The next evening, Assadi booked two hotel rooms,
(19:36):
one in the Dutch town of Meppel and another in
swart Sluice, both really small towns. And in April twenty seventeen,
Assardi booked a room at the Savoy Amsterdam for one
of his agents. So we know he was working in
the Netherlands and around the same time that Ali Mctammad
was murdered. It's far from a smoking gun, but it's
(19:57):
enough enough for me to ask Kasain does he think
that Asardi could have been connected to the murder of
Mohammed Reza Kalahi, also known as Alimtammad. I lay out
what we know, so he.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
Arrives, Assadi arrives in Austria in twenty fourteen, and then
in twenty fifteen, a man called Mohammed Reza Kolahi, who
was living in a town and al Mayor, was shot
and killed outside his house. The murder has never been solved.
They know who shot him, they know who told those
(20:33):
people to shoot him. The Dutch government then said we
believe the Iranian regime was behind this murder, and they
expelled to diplomat. But there's never been any any further
information about who could have coordinated a plot like that.
Do you think it's reasonable to assume that Asadi could
have been behind something like that.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
Well, I don't have a precise information about this case,
but it I think makes sense to believe that. Of course,
I mean, then Asadi was the you know, the head
of this intelligence section in mainly the Western Europe. I
think that is this could very well be I mean
(21:18):
I said, it could very well be behind that.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
So it's reasonable to assume, you know, we have a
spy working under diplomatic cover who is in charge of
all of Western Europe, and his focus is effectively organizing
assassination attempts against opposition figures. So it's a reasonable assumption
(21:41):
to think that of the assassinations or attempted assassinations that
occurred in Western Europe after twenty fourteen, he presumably would
have had to have some.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
He's had a hand in his hand in it.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Absolutely what he say says.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Of course, it doesn't prove anything, but at the very
least Assadi has to be considered a suspect. There's this
new wave of assassinations in Europe, all connected to the
Iranian state, and they begin after Assards posted to Vienna
in twenty fourteen, and the first is the murder of
an electrician in a small Dutch town. A year later,
(22:19):
Assadi is convicted for the attempted bombing in Paris and
he's sentenced to twenty years for attempted murder and plotting
a terrorist attack. Iran denies any involvement, but will never
know if he was involved in Ali Mahommed's death because
after Asadi is convicted, a Belgian aid worker is arrested
in Iran on these trumped up charges of espionage and
(22:40):
sentenced to forty years in prison and seventy four lashes.
Then in May twenty twenty three, the Belgian government agrees
to exchange Assadi for the aid worker, So Assardi he's
now back in Iran and his notebook aside. He's taken
his secrets with him. It's the twelfth of April twenty
(23:08):
twenty and we're back in Dublin City Hall. The entire time,
John O'Driscoll has been working on a plan to sanction
the Kinahans. He's been worried about it leaking because he
knows if the news gets out, they'll quickly be able
to hide their assets before they're frozen.
Speaker 7 (23:23):
Today's a landmark day.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
But now the Kinahans have run out of.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
Time and in particular against the Kenahan organized crime gang.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
John's boss, Drew Harris, Commissioner of the Irish Police, steps
up to the podium.
Speaker 7 (23:36):
This organized crime gang started life as a sopha inner
city Dublin drug dealers, but has grown over the decades
to become a transnational crime cartel that is estimated to
have generated over one billion euro for them.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Then a senior official from the US Treasury announces the
news that will make headlines around the world.
Speaker 8 (23:57):
So, as of today, the Kinahan transnational criminal Organization joins
the ranks of Italy's Camorra, Mexico's Los Zetas, Japan's Yakuza,
in Russia's Thieves in Law. Also, as of today, the
result of of these sanctions, these individuals are immediately served
from the US financial system and in the assets brought
(24:20):
property under US jurisdiction are immediate blocked.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
At this moment, we have to stop here for a
minute just to take this all in. It's utterly remarkable.
A criminal family that began in a Dublin flat in
the nineteen eighties is now being compared to the Yakuza
and Camorra crime groups whose origins date back hundreds of years.
They've been sanctioned by the US government, one of a
(24:44):
handful of organized crime groups to ever face that kind
of penalty, and the US also puts a five million
dollar bounty on the heads of Christy Daniel and his
brother Christopher Jr. Calling their organization a threat to the
entire Lizard economy through its role in international money laundering.
Detective Chief Superintendent Seamus Poland he knows that the US
(25:07):
sanctions will destroy the in a hands chance of continuing
their life of luxury in Dubai.
Speaker 9 (25:13):
Because the dangers with sanctions is that if any legitimate
business engages with somebody who's on a sanctions list, they're
actually the people who are committing the criminal offenses, and
they risk all their assets being seized and they risk
being prosecuted. So, you know, avenues to live the high
life that you would have had before are closed down
(25:34):
very very quickly. You know, people end up with so
much money from cocaine trafficking. Behind all this, it's all
about greed. You have money to try and live in
your big house, drive your fancy car, fly business class
all across the world, stay in the best hotels. What
the sanctions actually does is it removes a lot of
(25:54):
the facilitation that would be possible for people to live
their lives and to benefit from the illicit wealth that
they've actually achieved.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Soon, the United Ara memorates freeze Daniel's assets too, and
they empower their own sanctions on the Kinnahans in Dubai,
removing one of the last places on Earth they can
hide the Kinahans.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
They go on the run.
Speaker 9 (26:18):
Significant parties within the Kinahan organized crime group all went
to ground and have been attempting to evade justice and
hide in the shadows since that date. But from our
own information and intelligence and conversations with other criminals as well,
you know, I think this took to a different level
(26:40):
because the criminal on the world in Europe didn't anticipate
that sanctions was something that would happen on this side
of the Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
But the strange thing is it's been more than a
year since that big announcement in Dublin and the Kinnahans
they're all still at large. It's not clear where they are.
I've heard multiple rumors something that they're still in the UAE,
living on the false identities. Others think that there's somewhere
else in the Middle East laying low. Even had speculation
(27:10):
that they're building connections with Putin's Russia. So I asked Seamus,
why haven't the police been able to bring them in yet.
Speaker 9 (27:19):
Well, investigations are still ongoing as well at the moment,
so the sanctions was only one phase of a much
wider investigation that that's continuously ongoing and taking place. And
as was announced in April twenty twenty two at the
(27:40):
designation as well. You know, extradition warrants were in place
for one of the principles who's sought for charges in
relation to murder and directing organized crime, and that's still
outstanding as well. But you can rest assured that that
investigations are continuing actively across many different jurisdictions.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
For a few.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Years, the men one who gathered at Daniel Kinahan's wedding
in twenty seventeen seemed almost invincible. They created a new model,
stateless gangsters, using modern technology to run global mafias in
ways that were impossible a few decades before. But eventually
their reputation caught up with them. They made the mistake
(28:28):
of becoming too public, too brazen. I began reporting on
this story because I think it tells us something important
about how the world is changing and the global shifts
that made the Dubai Supercartel possible. They're only accelerating the
criminals of the future. I think they're going to be
more global, more sophisticated, and more dangerous, and I think
(28:52):
it's going to get harder to tell if someone's a gangster,
a businessman, or both. The story of the Supercartel for
me It's an ominous sign of these new hybrid threats
that democracies face and of government's weakening ability to fight them.
The sanctions against the Kinnahans, they've been hailed as a victory,
(29:12):
a landmark in coordinated action by Western governments to take
down a major crime group. But there's something I've kept
asking myself. With the sanctions a show of strength or
really just a sign of weakness. Some of the world's
most powerful governments have teamed up to go after the Kinnahans,
(29:32):
but a year later, they're still out there. So the
Dubai supercartel may be finished, but its model will live on,
and perhaps something new and maybe worse, will take its place.
In fact, somewhere out there, it probably already has.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Not.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Long before the sanctions were announced, Rafael Imperiale, the Van
Goff boss, was arrested in Dubai and sent to Italy.
He since agreed to become a state's witness, and in
November twenty twenty three, he told Hallian prosecutors he would
sell off his eighty million dollar private island in Dubai
in the hope of his sentence being reduced. MTK, the
(30:17):
boxing company that Daniel Kinahan co founded It closes and
back in the Netherlands where we began our story, Paul Urks,
the crime reporter, has been able to come out of
police protection and return to his normal life.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
We want dur life back in full, so not riding
an armored gah, but riding the bike and sitting down.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
A terrace uleas a Eliam, the local councilor and our
mayor who campaigned about the Alimtamid murder. Well, he's now
a national politician. In twenty twenty one, he was elected
to the Dutch Parliament.
Speaker 10 (30:52):
Look, you know, I was like this baby when I
got here. My father had like twenty dollars in his pocket.
But the honor of representing the Dutch people's it's massive
for me. My goal in life is defending democracy, defending freedom,
and that relates to the story of my dad and
also this story. Look how dangerous the world around us
can be.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
In the Kinahans, they have to live every day knowing
they're being hunted by police.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
For MIKEE.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Oysullivan, the man who first arrested Christy Kinahan in a
Dublin flat back in the nineteen eighties, it's only a
matter of time you.
Speaker 11 (31:28):
Feel like saying to them, did you not think this
stay had come? By doing what you're doing? Better people
than them have been got and they have made themselves
a global target. And with the DEA on your case,
the world is a small place and it gets smaller.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Pot Money is a production of The Financial Times and
Pushkin Industries. It was written and reports by me Miles Johnson,
and if you've got any leads or information about this story,
you can email me at New Narcos at FT dot com.
The series producer is Peggy Sutton. Edith Russello is the
associate producer. Fact Checking is by Arthur Gompertz, engineering by
(32:26):
Sarah Bruguerer, sound design from Jake Gorski. Jeremy Warmsley wrote
the original music. Our editor is Sarah Nix and the
executive producers are Jacob Goldstein and Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks
to Ruler Calaff, Laura Dubois, Peter Spiegel, Tofa Forehez, Manuela Saragoza,
Breen Turner, John Schnaz, Jacob Wiseberg, Alistair Mackie, Laura Clark,
(32:52):
Nigel Hansson, Paulo, Pascual, Minnie Advincoula, Dan Dombi, Tom Braithway,
Ronda Taylor, Matt Vela, Alex Barker, Patricia Nilsen.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Matt Garahan, Madison
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Marriage, Paul Murphy, rich Ward Arley Adlington, Marsha Wolraven, Jude Webber,
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Speaker 2 (00:18):
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(00:40):
p per month. Currently only available on iOS. There's a
link in the show notes. Previously on Hot Money, the
pressure on Daniel Kinahan is rising. His partners in the
Dubai supercartel are starting to fall, and police around the
world are working on a secret plan to take him
(01:01):
down for good. It's the morning of April twelfth, twenty
twenty two, and reporters and crews arrive at a press
conference in Dublin that's been called by the Irish Police. Officially,
there'll be an update on how law enforcement agencies are
working together to collaborate against international organized crime, but it's
(01:22):
a bit vague, perhaps suspiciously vague, and journalists they're starting
to speculate about what this press conference is really about.
Behind the scenes. John O'Driscoll is getting nervous. John's assistant
Commissioner in charge of Serious organized crime. Ever since his
meeting with US officials three years before, he's been working
(01:43):
on a single objective. And the press conference this morning
in Dublin it's going to be the moment he finally
gets to announce it to the world. But John knows
that if work gets out, it could all fall apart.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
He's chosen the venue carefully.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I said that, beyond any doubt, it was not going
to take place in those rooms that we may have
had press conferences relate to the ken Hens previously.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Instead, it would take place in Dublin City Hall. It's
the right sort of setting for a historic announcement. Marble flows,
huge classical pillars and statues on ancient Roman style plints.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
The holding of the event in City Hall was important,
first of all because it is that one for building
that it is, but also it is situated in south
inner city Dublin, which is where the Kenhn organization emerged from.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Quietly, senior officials from various foreign police forces have been
flying into Dublin. People from the US Treasury, DA and
Customs and Border protection officials from Europole and the UK's
National Crime Agency, including Deputy Director of Investigations Matt Horn.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
We derived the day before from the UK and had
been extremely well looked after by the GUARDA from the airport,
and you know they were keeping a very close eye
on ask to make sure that all the all of
us representatives of the international law enforcement community were sort
well looks after and well protected.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
And despite all these high profile police officers arriving in
Dublin at exactly the same time, John's been able to
keep things under wraps. Everyone's now seated, The whole falls
quiet in anticipation, and John walks out onto the stage.
Within minutes, the kinner Hands will become some of the
most wanted men on the planet. I'm Miles Johnson and
(03:43):
from the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. This is hot
money The New Narcos, Episode eight, The Red Notebook. Back
(04:12):
when I started at the FT as a trainee reporter
fifteen years ago, I never expected I'd end up writing
about organized crime. We covered things like the stock market
and mergers and acquisitions. There was this very clear boundary
back then between the world. We wrote about the world
of business, CEOs and politicians and the underworld, but something's
(04:35):
changed since then. The line between criminal activity and state
backed enterprise, between big business and gangsters has become fuzzier.
We live in a time where some heads of state
increasingly act like crime bosses, and the crime bosses they
act like the heads of multinational companies. It could be
a world leader investing billions into startups and tech companies,
(05:00):
but at the same time ordering the murder of dissidents abroad.
It could be North Korean state hackers stealing bitcoins to
fun missile programs, or Emmeinin backed tycoons using mercenary armies
to mine for gold in Africa. Or it could be
a cocaine cartel hiding out in Dubai while carrying out
contract killings in Europe for a sanctioned regime. It's all
(05:23):
part of the rise of a new type of criminal boss,
one backed by authoritarian governments. I called them state backed gangsters,
and they're thriving at a time when the world is
becoming more fragmented and more chaotic. Reporting on the Dubai supercartel,
I've discovered that European drug traffickers have been taking advantage
(05:45):
of the same money laundering channels that Iran uses to
evade Western sanctions. That seems to be the reason why
international criminals have become unlikely bedfellows with a theocratic regime.
That press conference that John's arranged, he knows it could
be the beginning of the end for the supercartel. But
before we get to that, I want to take a
(06:07):
little detour because there's an important question from the start
of this series that we still don't have an answer to.
The murder Broker was convicted for arranging the assassination of Alimtamed,
the electrician who was on the runt from Iran, but
no one has ever been able to find out who
in Iran gave the murder broker his orders. And enjoying
(06:29):
the reporting of this series, I came across something that
might help us get one step closer. It was a
case that revealed a ton of new information about the
way that Iran secretly pursues its enemies in Europe, people
like Alim Tamed. And there's someone I want to talk
to because he was directly involved in that case, someone
(06:50):
who has first hand experience of the long history of
violence against enemies of the Iranian regime wherever they are
in the world. Husseyin Aberdini was born in Iran, but
he now lives in London. He's in his late fifties
and he's quietly spoken that he's been fighting for most
of his life.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
I have been with the resistance over three decades now,
nearly four decades.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
In the spring of nineteen ninety, Hussein was a young
activist and he was in Turkey. He says he traveled
there to try and stop the deportation of Iranian refugees
who'd crossed the border illegally. One day in Istanbul, he's
in a car with two colleagues. They're on the motorway
when suddenly something blocks the road ahead.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
The traffic slows down. Hussein's up front, sitting next to
the driver, and all.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Of a sudden we heard, you know, the sound of bullets.
They riddled our car from the bag.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Hussein barely has time to take in that someone is
shooting at them when a car smashes into the front
of their vehicle.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
They can't drive away and.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Another car pinned us from behind. It was then which
I realized, you know, this was this was an assassination
or kidnapping.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
A man jumps out of the vehicle in front, the
one that's just plowed into their car.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
He's holding a revolver.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
And it was only I think a couple of meters
before he reached our car. I tried to do something.
There was a briefcase belonging to my female colleague and
sitting the back of the car, so I just took dad,
opened the door and went to stop him.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
He's clutching the briefcase like a shield as the man
starts shooting.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
First bullet hit my chest and I didn't know how
many bullets, you know, I received then, and I just
fell down, fell down in the street.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Saint's lying on the ground, bleeding, and he can see
the man walk up to him. He's preparing to take
a final shot, but nothing happens.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
The bullet jammed and the muzzle of the gun.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
That's a Saint's first lucky break. The traffic starts to
move again, and the assassin take off. Hussein desperately needs
to get to the hospital, but the car he was
in is smashed up, and everyone else on the motorway
they seemed to be trying to run away as quickly
as they can.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
I remember very vaguely that my colleague threw herself, you know,
in front of one of the cars, and there was
a taxi which has stopped and I was put at
the back of the taxi and I just got unconscious.
The hospital was only three minutes away. If it was
further than that, I wouldn't make it.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Hussein fell into a coma. It would be fifty days
before he woke up. He was told that one bullet
had passed very close to his heart and another had
destroyed his liver. But even at the hospital he's not safe.
The killers they come back, and this time they're posing
as his friends.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
But my true friends arrived and they were told, you
know that there are other people who wanted to come
and see me. And then those people escaped from the
scene when they realized, you know, there were people, my
true friends, you know, we're there.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
That's the same second stroke of luck, and there'll be
a third one as well. When the killers call up,
pretending to be the police, they tell the hospital staff
that they know Hussein is now conscious and they want
to interview him about what happened.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
But the president of Turkey in those days was Tolgodozol
and his mother, you know, was in the same hospital.
The president wanted to come and visit his mother, and
they sailed off the whole area hospital and they realized
there was another branch of police who wanted to come
and see me, and they found out there was a
(10:51):
Bogos call. It was the Ranian regime who wanted to
get rid of me because they didn't want me to speak.
That was very pure luck.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
That was more than thirty years ago. Hussein tells me
he's still affected every day by the damaged onto his
liver in that attack. He's one of the rare survivors
of an assassination attempt by the Iranian regime. Several of
his friends and colleagues have been murdered since then. Today,
Hussain is a senior member of Iran's main foreign opposition group,
(11:24):
the National Council of Resistance of Iran or the NCRI.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
SO the main objective of the National Council of Resistance
of Iran is to establish a democratic and the secular
government in Iran. Its main principle, of course, has been
against any dictatorship, whether there's the formula dictatorship of the
Shah or the present medieval dictatorship of the Mullahs.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
The NCRI, it's an umbrella organization, and one of the
largest groups within it is called the People's Mojahdeen Organization
of Iran, known by its Farsi initials me e K
now the MEK, it hasn't always had the West's approval.
It was implicated in several terrorist attacks against Iran, including
the nineteen eighty one bombing that Tehran claimed was carried
(12:12):
out by Ali matamed the Quiet Electrician.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
In the Netherlands.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
From nineteen ninety seven to twenty twelve, the mk was
designated as a terror organization by the US government, But
over the past decade it's refashioned itself and now it's
a pretty influential opposition voice on Iran. But for all
its acceptance by Western powers, the NCRI remains a top
target of the Iranian regime. In June twenty eighteen, Hussain
(12:39):
and his colleagues are in Paris. They're holding a huge meeting,
a rally called the Free Iran World Summit.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
Tens of thousands of Iranians with many non Iranian supporters
of the resistance who came from sixty seven different countries
throughout the ward.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Dozens of foreign politicians are invited as well, and everyone
convenes in a vast conference center. It's only afterwards the
Hussain finds out what very nearly happened.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
I think it was on the first of July. The
next day that was told by a friend that the
Belgian Featheral police, you know, they had arrested two Iranians
who are trying, you know, to bring a bomb.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Belgian police had arrested two Iranians who were on their
way to the Paris conference center with a bomb. It's
another lucky escape for Hussein and hundreds of other people.
And as police investigate the failed bomb plot, they're going
to discover something that I believe could shed new light
on the murder of Alimtomed. It's the most important discovery
(13:41):
in decades about how Iran targets its enemies abroad. And
this time the clues aren't just glimpses, hints or encryptied messages.
They're in a battered, red notebook filled with handwritten notes,
sitting in the back of a car. So Hussein and
(14:13):
his colleagues they discover that someone had tried to plant
a bomb at the rally in Paris, and at the
same time, police in Germany arrest an Iranian man on
a highway in Bavaria. His name is Assa Dolla Asadi
and officially he's the third councilor of the Iranian Embassy
in Vienna. He arrived in Europe in twenty fourteen, but
(14:35):
in reality he's a top spy for Iran's Ministry of
Intelligence and Security. It's Iran's equivalent of the CIA or
MI six. Assadi is running a network of agents across Europe,
meeting them in cafes in small medieval towns and handing
over secret instructions or bundles of cash. And months before
the Paris rally, he traveled to Tehran, returning to Europe
(14:59):
with a sophisticated bomb hidden in his diplomatic luggage. The
bombs made from an explosive known as Tatp or Mother
of Satan, extremely volatile. Asardi carries it on too Luxembourg
and hands it over to his agents. In this part
of the story, it's a bit less like a Lacarian
novel because the venue he chooses it's a pizza hut.
(15:22):
He gives them the bomb with instructions for planting it
at the Paris rally, and the code word he uses
is PlayStation. But what Asardi doesn't know is that European
intelligence agencies have been watching his every move and know
exactly what he's been planning. They even disabled the airport
security scanner so he could get through. The two agents
(15:42):
are arrested as they travel from Brussels to Paris. Assardi
is pulled over by the police on a motorway in Germany,
and in the back of his car they find a battered,
red notebook filled with handwritten notes, notes that reveal that
Asardi was involved in way more than one bomb plot.
Assadi has listed hundreds of different meetings with agents across Europe.
(16:06):
He's itemized cash payments he's made to spies, and he's
listed more than two hundred places he's visited as part
of his work in eleven different countries. Because as Sardi,
according to the findings of a Belgian criminal court, is
part of a secret unit of Iranian foreign intelligence, a
sort of murder squad in Europe. It's called Department three
(16:26):
one two and its role is to kill opponents of
the regime abroad. There's not much public information about Department
three one two, but what we do know it's pretty terrifying.
It's thought to be a top secret unit that specializes
in spying on human rights activists, journalists and others who
(16:46):
the Iranian regime believed to be a threat, but was
Ali Mtummed one of their targets. We know that Assardi
arrived in his new job in June twenty fourteen, a
little over a year before Alie Mtummd was killed outside
his house in ol Mayor. It was the first successful
targeted assassination carried out by Iran in Western Europe in
(17:07):
over twenty three years. And then two years later, in
twenty seventeen, while Assardi was still free, another Iranian opposition.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Member was gunned down in the Netherlands.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
So we can say that Assadi arrives in Vienna in
late twenty fourteen and then suddenly Iran is linked to
several assassinations in Europe. This isn't conclusive evidence, but according
to the Belgian criminal court documents targeting dissidents, that was
Assadi's job, so it makes sense that he would at
(17:40):
least be a suspect in the Matamad murder. And we
also know that Assadi he was reporting into really top
people in Iran, including the Deputy Minister of Intelligence After
his arrest for the bomb plot, Assardi's put on trial
in Belgium and he gets prison visits from some of
Iran's most senior spies and other officials from its foreign ministry.
(18:00):
They clearly cared a lot about this case. The criminal
case against Assadi was brought by the Belgian government, but
there were also twenty five five others who joined as
private plaintiffs. They were all at the Paris rally, and
Hussein was one of them, and it gave him access
to all the prosecution's evidence. He sent me the files.
This is hundreds of pages of documents in several European languages,
(18:23):
and there's also extracts from Asardi's red notebook. And there's
something else, something that I think could be important. Assardi's
job meant that he had to travel a lot on
work trips across Europe to meet with his various agents.
And it turns out that even spies used booking dot Com,
the huge online travel agent, to book their hotels, or
at least Assadi did, and the details of all those
(18:46):
bookings they're in the files. So I'm sat here in
the offices of the Financial Times looking.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
At these records.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Every hotel Assadi stayed in over his four years operating
in Europe. For some of the bookings he used his
official Iranian Foreign Ministry email address. For others it was
burner accounts from Yahoo and Gmail. I should have met
his agents in some pretty low key locations, and he
often seemed to book two hotels in different places for
(19:15):
the same night, maybe thinking it would throw off anyone
who was following him. In the records, they do show
that he traveled to the Netherlands on the sixth of
September twenty sixteen, less than a year after Mtammad was murdered.
He stayed at the Best Western in the Hague for
one night. The next evening, Assadi booked two hotel rooms,
(19:36):
one in the Dutch town of Meppel and another in
swart Sluice, both really small towns. And in April twenty seventeen,
Assardi booked a room at the Savoy Amsterdam for one
of his agents. So we know he was working in
the Netherlands and around the same time that Ali Mctammad
was murdered. It's far from a smoking gun, but it's
(19:57):
enough enough for me to ask Kasain does he think
that Asardi could have been connected to the murder of
Mohammed Reza Kalahi, also known as Alimtammad. I lay out
what we know, so he.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
Arrives, Assadi arrives in Austria in twenty fourteen, and then
in twenty fifteen, a man called Mohammed Reza Kolahi, who
was living in a town and al Mayor, was shot
and killed outside his house. The murder has never been solved.
They know who shot him, they know who told those
(20:33):
people to shoot him. The Dutch government then said we
believe the Iranian regime was behind this murder, and they
expelled to diplomat. But there's never been any any further
information about who could have coordinated a plot like that.
Do you think it's reasonable to assume that Asadi could
have been behind something like that.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
Well, I don't have a precise information about this case,
but it I think makes sense to believe that. Of course,
I mean, then Asadi was the you know, the head
of this intelligence section in mainly the Western Europe. I
think that is this could very well be I mean
(21:18):
I said, it could very well be behind that.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
So it's reasonable to assume, you know, we have a
spy working under diplomatic cover who is in charge of
all of Western Europe, and his focus is effectively organizing
assassination attempts against opposition figures. So it's a reasonable assumption
(21:41):
to think that of the assassinations or attempted assassinations that
occurred in Western Europe after twenty fourteen, he presumably would
have had to have some.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
He's had a hand in his hand in it.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Absolutely what he say says.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Of course, it doesn't prove anything, but at the very
least Assadi has to be considered a suspect. There's this
new wave of assassinations in Europe, all connected to the
Iranian state, and they begin after Assards posted to Vienna
in twenty fourteen, and the first is the murder of
an electrician in a small Dutch town. A year later,
(22:19):
Assadi is convicted for the attempted bombing in Paris and
he's sentenced to twenty years for attempted murder and plotting
a terrorist attack. Iran denies any involvement, but will never
know if he was involved in Ali Mahommed's death because
after Asadi is convicted, a Belgian aid worker is arrested
in Iran on these trumped up charges of espionage and
(22:40):
sentenced to forty years in prison and seventy four lashes.
Then in May twenty twenty three, the Belgian government agrees
to exchange Assadi for the aid worker, So Assardi he's
now back in Iran and his notebook aside. He's taken
his secrets with him. It's the twelfth of April twenty
(23:08):
twenty and we're back in Dublin City Hall. The entire time,
John O'Driscoll has been working on a plan to sanction
the Kinahans. He's been worried about it leaking because he
knows if the news gets out, they'll quickly be able
to hide their assets before they're frozen.
Speaker 7 (23:23):
Today's a landmark day.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
But now the Kinahans have run out of.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
Time and in particular against the Kenahan organized crime gang.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
John's boss, Drew Harris, Commissioner of the Irish Police, steps
up to the podium.
Speaker 7 (23:36):
This organized crime gang started life as a sopha inner
city Dublin drug dealers, but has grown over the decades
to become a transnational crime cartel that is estimated to
have generated over one billion euro for them.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Then a senior official from the US Treasury announces the
news that will make headlines around the world.
Speaker 8 (23:57):
So, as of today, the Kinahan transnational criminal Organization joins
the ranks of Italy's Camorra, Mexico's Los Zetas, Japan's Yakuza,
in Russia's Thieves in Law. Also, as of today, the
result of of these sanctions, these individuals are immediately served
from the US financial system and in the assets brought
(24:20):
property under US jurisdiction are immediate blocked.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
At this moment, we have to stop here for a
minute just to take this all in. It's utterly remarkable.
A criminal family that began in a Dublin flat in
the nineteen eighties is now being compared to the Yakuza
and Camorra crime groups whose origins date back hundreds of years.
They've been sanctioned by the US government, one of a
(24:44):
handful of organized crime groups to ever face that kind
of penalty, and the US also puts a five million
dollar bounty on the heads of Christy Daniel and his
brother Christopher Jr. Calling their organization a threat to the
entire Lizard economy through its role in international money laundering.
Detective Chief Superintendent Seamus Poland he knows that the US
(25:07):
sanctions will destroy the in a hands chance of continuing
their life of luxury in Dubai.
Speaker 9 (25:13):
Because the dangers with sanctions is that if any legitimate
business engages with somebody who's on a sanctions list, they're
actually the people who are committing the criminal offenses, and
they risk all their assets being seized and they risk
being prosecuted. So, you know, avenues to live the high
life that you would have had before are closed down
(25:34):
very very quickly. You know, people end up with so
much money from cocaine trafficking. Behind all this, it's all
about greed. You have money to try and live in
your big house, drive your fancy car, fly business class
all across the world, stay in the best hotels. What
the sanctions actually does is it removes a lot of
(25:54):
the facilitation that would be possible for people to live
their lives and to benefit from the illicit wealth that
they've actually achieved.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Soon, the United Ara memorates freeze Daniel's assets too, and
they empower their own sanctions on the Kinnahans in Dubai,
removing one of the last places on Earth they can
hide the Kinahans.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
They go on the run.
Speaker 9 (26:18):
Significant parties within the Kinahan organized crime group all went
to ground and have been attempting to evade justice and
hide in the shadows since that date. But from our
own information and intelligence and conversations with other criminals as well,
you know, I think this took to a different level
(26:40):
because the criminal on the world in Europe didn't anticipate
that sanctions was something that would happen on this side
of the Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
But the strange thing is it's been more than a
year since that big announcement in Dublin and the Kinnahans
they're all still at large. It's not clear where they are.
I've heard multiple rumors something that they're still in the UAE,
living on the false identities. Others think that there's somewhere
else in the Middle East laying low. Even had speculation
(27:10):
that they're building connections with Putin's Russia. So I asked Seamus,
why haven't the police been able to bring them in yet.
Speaker 9 (27:19):
Well, investigations are still ongoing as well at the moment,
so the sanctions was only one phase of a much
wider investigation that that's continuously ongoing and taking place. And
as was announced in April twenty twenty two at the
(27:40):
designation as well. You know, extradition warrants were in place
for one of the principles who's sought for charges in
relation to murder and directing organized crime, and that's still
outstanding as well. But you can rest assured that that
investigations are continuing actively across many different jurisdictions.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
For a few.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Years, the men one who gathered at Daniel Kinahan's wedding
in twenty seventeen seemed almost invincible. They created a new model,
stateless gangsters, using modern technology to run global mafias in
ways that were impossible a few decades before. But eventually
their reputation caught up with them. They made the mistake
(28:28):
of becoming too public, too brazen. I began reporting on
this story because I think it tells us something important
about how the world is changing and the global shifts
that made the Dubai Supercartel possible. They're only accelerating the
criminals of the future. I think they're going to be
more global, more sophisticated, and more dangerous, and I think
(28:52):
it's going to get harder to tell if someone's a gangster,
a businessman, or both. The story of the Supercartel for
me It's an ominous sign of these new hybrid threats
that democracies face and of government's weakening ability to fight them.
The sanctions against the Kinnahans, they've been hailed as a victory,
(29:12):
a landmark in coordinated action by Western governments to take
down a major crime group. But there's something I've kept
asking myself. With the sanctions a show of strength or
really just a sign of weakness. Some of the world's
most powerful governments have teamed up to go after the Kinnahans,
(29:32):
but a year later, they're still out there. So the
Dubai supercartel may be finished, but its model will live on,
and perhaps something new and maybe worse, will take its place.
In fact, somewhere out there, it probably already has.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Not.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Long before the sanctions were announced, Rafael Imperiale, the Van
Goff boss, was arrested in Dubai and sent to Italy.
He since agreed to become a state's witness, and in
November twenty twenty three, he told Hallian prosecutors he would
sell off his eighty million dollar private island in Dubai
in the hope of his sentence being reduced. MTK, the
(30:17):
boxing company that Daniel Kinahan co founded It closes and
back in the Netherlands where we began our story, Paul Urks,
the crime reporter, has been able to come out of
police protection and return to his normal life.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
We want dur life back in full, so not riding
an armored gah, but riding the bike and sitting down.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
A terrace uleas a Eliam, the local councilor and our
mayor who campaigned about the Alimtamid murder. Well, he's now
a national politician. In twenty twenty one, he was elected
to the Dutch Parliament.
Speaker 10 (30:52):
Look, you know, I was like this baby when I
got here. My father had like twenty dollars in his pocket.
But the honor of representing the Dutch people's it's massive
for me. My goal in life is defending democracy, defending freedom,
and that relates to the story of my dad and
also this story. Look how dangerous the world around us
can be.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
In the Kinahans, they have to live every day knowing
they're being hunted by police.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
For MIKEE.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Oysullivan, the man who first arrested Christy Kinahan in a
Dublin flat back in the nineteen eighties, it's only a
matter of time you.
Speaker 11 (31:28):
Feel like saying to them, did you not think this
stay had come? By doing what you're doing? Better people
than them have been got and they have made themselves
a global target. And with the DEA on your case,
the world is a small place and it gets smaller.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Pot Money is a production of The Financial Times and
Pushkin Industries. It was written and reports by me Miles Johnson,
and if you've got any leads or information about this story,
you can email me at New Narcos at FT dot com.
The series producer is Peggy Sutton. Edith Russello is the
associate producer. Fact Checking is by Arthur Gompertz, engineering by
(32:26):
Sarah Bruguerer, sound design from Jake Gorski. Jeremy Warmsley wrote
the original music. Our editor is Sarah Nix and the
executive producers are Jacob Goldstein and Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks
to Ruler Calaff, Laura Dubois, Peter Spiegel, Tofa Forehez, Manuela Saragoza,
Breen Turner, John Schnaz, Jacob Wiseberg, Alistair Mackie, Laura Clark,
(32:52):
Nigel Hansson, Paulo, Pascual, Minnie Advincoula, Dan Dombi, Tom Braithway,
Ronda Taylor, Matt Vela, Alex Barker, Patricia Nilsen.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Matt Garahan, Madison
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Marriage, Paul Murphy, rich Ward Arley Adlington, Marsha Wolraven, Jude Webber,
Harry Brodie, Eric Sandler, Nicole op den Bosch, Christina Sullivan,
Vicky Merrick, Jake Flanagan and Greta Cone
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