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On the morning of August 9, 2026, an Irish government aircraft Dassault Falcon 6X took off from Dubai. More than 70 000 people followed the small icon on the online map. At around 6:30 PM, the Falcon landed at Casement Airfield near Dublin. On board, under the protection of Irish security forces, was 49-year-old Daniel Kinahan. Twenty minutes after landing, he was formally arrested on an Irish warrant.
Six cars with tinted windows sped out of the airfield at high speed. Two separate motorcades arrived at the courthouse, one as a decoy in case of an attack. Armed police, military and prison officers took part in the operation. The prison guards had purchased a special bulletproof van to transport Kinahan. People outside the courthouse filmed the motorcades on their phones and tried to catch a glimpse of the man who had been hunted by Irish law enforcement for over a decade.
An Irish government plane carrying Daniel Kinahan lands at Casement Airfield near Dublin, August 9, 2026. A police motorcade takes Kinahan to the Special Criminal Court in Dublin, August 9, 2026.
Kinahan was brought to the Special Criminal Court in a black hoodie, sweatpants and flip-flops. He was without a lawyer. As he explained, he had spent the last days before his extradition in isolation, so he had not had time to arrange for a defense and thought that his relatives would find a lawyer.
The hearing lasted about fifteen minutes. The detective read out a single charge: from October 18, 2015, to April 6, 2017, Kinahan directed the activities of a criminal organization. The judge explained that he could only apply for bail in the High Court.
"I understand. I think we all know I wonʼt get bail, but thanks for the explanation," Kinahan replied.
After the hearing, he was taken to Portlaoise High Security Prison, the most secure prison in Ireland. A section of the wing designed for eight people was freed up for Kinahan. The next hearing was set for October 5.
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The story that led Kinahan to prison began with a conflict between former partners.
Gary Hutch — a nephew of the notorious Dublin criminal Jerry Hutch, worked with the Kinahans in Spain for many years. In August 2014, he, according to one version, decided to take €4.5 million in cash from Daniel Kinahan’s villa and organized an assassination attempt on him to do so. The attempt failed — the killer got confused and shot another person instead of Kinahan.
Kinahan’s people also suspected Gary of working for the police. Gary went on the run. According to some accounts, the Hutch family paid the Kinahans €200 000 either for a truce or for Gary’s life.
When everything seemed to calm down, Gary returned to the Costa del Sol. A few weeks later, on September 24, 2015, he was shot dead outside a rented apartment in Marbella. A Spanish court found one of Kinahan’s people involved in this murder.
Daniel Kinahan (left) and Gary Hutch at the MGM Boxing Hall in Marbella — just months before the former friends became enemies.
For the Hutches, this was not just the murder of a relative, but a violation of a deal they had already paid for. A bloody massacre began between the clans.
On February 5, 2016, a weigh-in was taking place at the Regency Hotel in Dublin before a boxing match organized by Kinahanʼs company. Six armed men suddenly burst into the hall — two with machine guns were disguised as police officers. According to the investigation, their main target was Daniel Kinagan. A shootout began. Daniel was not injured, but his friend was killed, and his right-hand man Sean McGovern was wounded.
Police outside Dublinʼs Regency Hotel after a shooting at a boxing weigh-in on February 5, 2016. Surveillance cameras captured armed attackers at the Regency Hotel, some of whom were dressed in Irish police uniforms.
Three days after the attack, Jerry Hutchʼs brother Eddie was killed outside his own home. On a secret network, the cartel leaders were already choosing their next targets.
"No one will stop until theyʼre all dead," wrote a user with the nickname “Cap”.
In December 2016, 62-year-old Noel Kirwan became another victim. He was not a member of any gang, but he had been friends with the Hutches since childhood and happened to be in a photo from Eddieʼs funeral. He had been followed by the Kinahan cartel for nine months. Three days before Christmas, Kirwan was shot dead outside his home as he and his wife were returning from dinner.
Another target of the cartel was James Gately, a former Kinahan associate who defected to the Hutches and was a pallbearer at Gary’s funeral. In the spring of 2017, a hitman was brought to Ireland from Estonia to assassinate him.
It was this assassination attempt that left the mark that would ultimately prove fatal for Kinahan, but no one suspected it at the time.
Eddie Hutch, brother of Jerry Hutch. He was murdered in his own home three days after the Regency attack.
Noel Kirwan, a friend of the Hutchesʼ family, was murdered in December 2016.
James Gately after a boxing match. A former associate of the Kinahans, he defected to the Hutches and became a target of the cartel.
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In 2015-2017, the leaders of the Kinahan cartel communicated via the encrypted network “secretblackmars” (literally “secret black Mars”). It was not a single group chat or an ordinary messenger, but a closed private network on modified BlackBerrys. Messages were encrypted using PGP technology and passed through a separate server. Instead of names, users had pseudonyms: “Bon”, “Bon Neww”, “Cap”, “Knife”, “Leg”.
Here, the top of the cartel discussed who to kill, who to entrust with surveillance, where to get weapons, and how to respond to arrests. If a phone got into the hands of the police, it could be wiped remotely. For Kinahan’s people, “secretblackmars” was a protected operations room. For investigators, this network later became a digital crime scene.
On April 3, 2017, a burly Estonian named Imre Arakas (nicknamed “The Butcher”), emerged from Dublin Airport. Back in Soviet times, he had stolen thirteen pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition from a shooting club in Tallinn.
After his arrest, he fled the court, but was recaptured and sentenced to fifteen years. Arakas spent most of his term in a Russian maximum-security colony. After his release, he began taking orders for assassinations in various European countries.
Estonian hitman Imre Arakas, nicknamed “The Butcher”.
The Irish police received advance information about Arakasʼs arrival. The operatives recognized him at the airport, followed him all day, and detained him in a rented house the next morning. On the killerʼs unlocked BlackBerry, one of the police officers saw the correspondence and managed to take a picture of several messages. A few minutes later, they disappeared from the screen right before his eyes — the cartelʼs people remotely deleted the correspondence.
In the preserved photographs, Arakas was talking to a man under the pseudonym Bon Neww. Irish police believe that this name was Daniel Kinahan. The killer wrote that he could shoot Gately when he got out of the car and walked to the door of the house. To do this, he needed a precision weapon, a silencer and the ability to make a single shot to the head from a distance. Bon Neww replied that there was a GPS beacon on the car: when there were ten minutes left before the house, Arakas should take up position.
The cartel bought the beacons from the Spy Shop in Leeds, UK. They were installed in the cars of future victims and their relatives, and when the batteries ran low, they were discreetly removed, charged and put back in place. The movement of the cars was monitored from a laptop in a secret apartment. Police later found that the beacon control panel alone had been accessed at least 1 387 times.
Arakasʼs arrest caused panic. Danielʼs right-hand man Sean McGovern (who called himself “Knife” in his correspondence) wrote that everyone would be arrested and advised them to run away until they were all in handcuffs. Bon Neww was also nervous: he personally sent the killer information about the surveillance. McGovern tried to calm him down, saying that the killerʼs phone had already been erased. None of them knew that the policeman had managed to take pictures of part of the correspondence.
On April 6, 2017, two days after the Estonian was arrested, police searched McGovern’s home. They seized an encrypted BlackBerry and other phones, but were unable to read the deleted messages. McGovern had no charges to bring against him and was released. He soon left for Dubai, where Daniel Kinahan was already living.
Sean McGovern is Daniel Kinahanʼs closest aide and right-hand man. In the cartelʼs secret chat room, he appeared under the alias Knife.
After this incident, Kinagan became more cautious and no longer used encrypted networks. Twice a week, he would go for a walk through the streets of Dubai with McGovern. McGovern would memorize the boss’s instructions and then relay them to cartel members in other countries via his own encrypted phones. One Europol employee later described Kinagan as the only drug dealer smart enough to stay away from secret correspondence.
The BlackBerrys of Arakas and McGovern remained with the police. In 2017, it was technically impossible to read the deleted messages. When exactly they were restored, the police did not say: it is only known that new digital forensics tools made it possible to do so.
In the spring of 2026, the contents of the correspondence were first made public in court. The messages matched other evidence: camera recordings in Dublin and Belfast, navigation routes, telephone connections, GPS beacons, fingerprints and DNA. This is how the police established that McGovern was behind the alias Knife and recreated his role in preparing the murders.
McGovern was arrested by Dubai police on October 10, 2024. In May 2025, he was extradited to Ireland under a separate agreement: a new extradition treaty had already entered into force, but his case did not apply. In March 2026, McGovern admitted to directing one murder and preparing for another.
He brought a Sudoku book and Amor Towles’s novel “A Gentleman in Moscow”, the story of an aristocrat who was sentenced to live under surveillance in a hotel. While the detectives described the surveillance and preparation of the murders, McGovern bent his head over the boxes and wrote down the numbers.
He did not put down his pencil even when the lawyer read the statement of Noel Kirwan’s daughter. She recalled how she had arrived at her father’s house after the murder and how she had been ordered not to look at the body. Meanwhile, McGovern solved the puzzle.
In June 2026, the court sentenced him to a total sentence of 24 years. During the hearing, the court heard for the first time the content of the correspondence on the secretblackmars network and established that McGovern received orders from people who were higher up in the cartel.
Now the same messages have become part of the Daniel Kinahan case. The prosecution must prove that the pseudonyms “Bon”, “Bon Neww” and “Cap” belonged to him.
Detective Superintendent Dave Gallagher addresses reporters after sentencing Sean McGovern, June 8, 2026.
Getty Images / «Babel'»
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After the attack at the Regency, Dubai became not a temporary hideout for Kinagan, but a home. His father Christy and younger brother Christopher already lived here. Daniel moved his wife and children here. The family did not hide. The Kinahans rented a luxury apartment on the Palm Jumeirah, one of the most expensive areas of Dubai.
In April 2022, the US imposed sanctions on the top of the cartel. Partners began to turn away from Daniel, his promotion company MTK Global closed, and his public boxing career ended.
However, this did not affect the family fortune. Daniel Kinahan’s wife was not included in the sanctions list. According to land registry documents examined by ICIJ and The Irish Times, in 2022 the couple registered four properties in Dubai.
The following year, Daniel Kinahan’s wife purchased an unfinished villa with an area of almost two thousand square meters for about $ 2.1 million, and in 2024 she sold a four-room apartment with a view of the Dubai Marina for $ 1 million.
Palm Jumeirah is one of the most expensive areas in Dubai. Daniel Kinahan lived here with his wife and five children.
Wikimedia
When Babel wrote about the Kinahans in April 2024, their former supercartel had already collapsed, and most of their own distribution network in Ireland had been dismantled by the police.
However, the family business did not disappear anywhere. It continued to operate, although according to a different scheme. The Kinagans increasingly rarely organized the sale of drugs on the streets themselves, and instead invested money in large batches of other groups. They provided their partners with contacts of suppliers, routes, transport and people who could launder the profits, in return for receiving their share.
In December 2024, British investigators revealed one of the routes of this money. During Operation Destabilise, the National Crime Agency exposed two Russian-language money laundering networks — Smart and TGR, whose services were used by the Kinagans.
The scheme allowed for the avoidance of transporting suitcases of cash across borders. The courier would pick up money from drug sales, for example, in Britain. Almost immediately, their owner would receive the same amount in cryptocurrency in another country and could invest it in a new batch of drugs or weapons.
The same networks served Russian elites, cybercriminals and espionage operations. As part of the entire operation, 84 people were detained and more than £20 million in cash and cryptocurrency was seized. The British authorities did not specify how much of this money was controlled by the Kinagans.
Cash seized by Irish police and customs officers during an investigation into an international money laundering ring used by the Kinahan family.
The extent of the drug trafficking Kinagans were able to finance became clearer in 2025 during the trial of the crew of the cargo ship MV Matthew. In September 2023, Irish special forces intercepted it with more than two tons of cocaine. Investigators later said that the operation was jointly financed by Kinahans, the Colombian cartel Clan del Golfo, and people connected to Hezbollah in Venezuela. It was controlled from Dubai.
Daniel himself was not hiding much in the Emirates. In June 2025, after McGovernʼs arrest, he and Christieʼs father were seen in the VIP area near the ring at a mixed martial arts tournament at Dubaiʼs Coca-Cola Arena.
Daniel Kinahan (left), world boxing champion Tyson Fury and boxer Zaid Khan in Dubai, February 2022. Scottish podcaster James English in Dubai. In 2022, he recorded a three-hour interview with Kinagan, but has yet to publish it in full.
Meanwhile, the UAE was gradually ceasing to be a safe haven for foreign crime bosses. The Emirates were trying to shed their reputation as a place where you could live and spend your illicit money. Ireland had been pushing for a permanent extradition mechanism for several years.
The Kinahan case accelerated the negotiations, but the agreement was part of a broader effort to combat international crime. The countries signed the treaty in October 2024, and it entered into force on May 18, 2025.
By then, Irish investigators had already assembled a case against Daniel. In early 2026, the prosecution agreed to the charges and the High Court issued an arrest warrant. Dubai prosecutors issued their warrant on April 15, and within 48 hours, police arrested Kinahan. Daniel tried to challenge the extradition twice, but lost. He became the first Irish citizen to be extradited to the UAE under the new treaty.
The exact size of the Kinahan cartel is unknown. After Daniel’s arrest in April, former Irish detective Noel Brown called the event “half a victory” — the arrest of one leader is unlikely to destroy the cartel. Such groups are made up of autonomous cells and adapt easily, so the network is more likely to fragment than disappear.
In addition, Daniel’s father Christie and younger brother Christopher remain at large. Ireland has not yet filed charges against them, although the investigation is ongoing.
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Before his extradition, Kinahan decided to publicly deny the charges once again. He turned to Scottish podcaster James English, who flew to Dubai in 2022 and recorded a three-hour video with him.
The release was reported for St. Patrickʼs Day, but two days before the publication, English canceled the premiere. He explained this by saying that he had been advised not to air the interview due to "legal issues".
Podcaster James English announces an interview with Daniel Kinahan in March 2022.
On July 31, 2026, English released a nearly four-minute clip, much of it made up of excerpts from a canceled 2022 interview. Kinahan called the cartel a fabrication, hinted at a conspiracy behind the Regency attack, and described how he saw an armed assailant and fled. He called himself “not an angel” but a “scapegoat”.
At the end of the video, Kinahanʼs voice was heard from a phone booth in a Dubai prison. He claimed that the court had deliberately accelerated the consideration of his extradition because the authorities had agreed to something. Kinahan said that he had already received a life sentence, and now he had to go through a "dance", a "circus" and another destruction of his reputation.
In the following short recordings, he agreed to any plane to Ireland, even a seat in the hold or economy class, dreamed of white batch bread with King or Tayto crisps and warned that if he was found in prison hanged, poisoned or with a broken head, it would not be suicide or an accident.
In a two-minute recording released on the eve of his extradition on August 8, Kinahan called the prison a “hole”, predicted “crazy” security upon his return, and finally invited English to come to Portlaoise Prison for a “real interview”.
Daniel Kinahan (in the back seat on the right) leaves the courthouse in Dublin after the first hearing, August 9, 2026.
Getty Images / «Babel'»