Kinahan and his sons facing trial in Spain
Gang boss to be tried on money-laundering charges
GANG boss Christy Kinahan Snr and his sons are to be tried within the next few months on money-laundering charges, according to prosecutors in Spain.
A judge in Estepona has led a long-running investigation into the cartel branded a ‘mafia family’ by Spain’s Minister of the Interior when they were arrested with more t han 20 other suspects during Costa del Sol dawn raids in May 2010.
Allegations of drugs and arms trafficking against the Irishmen and their alleged accomplices were dropped nearly two years ago.
The ongoing criminal investigation has continued but has focused only on allegations of money laundering and membership of a criminal gang.
Julio Martinez, chief prosecutor for the nearby Marbella area, admitted yesterday the investigation into the Kinahans had been much l ess i ncriminating than expected. He told Spanish newspaper El Pais: ‘The expectations were very high but the results have not been as satisfactory as we’d anticipated.’
But he said he was confident that the case against Christy and his sons Daniel and Christopher would not take many months to come to trial.
He told the newspaper that some loose ends were being tied up and the Spanish authorities were awaiting a response to official inquiries sent to Britain via Rogatory Commissions.
Alfredo Rubalcaba, Spain’s Minister of the Interior when the Kina- hans were arrested along with alleged right-hand man John Cunningham as part of Operation Shovel, linked the alleged gang ringleaders to a string of murders when he congratulated police after the raids.
Although he did not name the suspects, he said at the time: ‘This was an operation against an important, well-known mafia of organised crime, which has operated in different countries and which is being linked to various murders and with a number of crimes from drug trafficking to people trafficking. It is a mafia family relatively well-known in the United Kingdom, a little less known in Spain, but they are established on the Costa del Sol.’
The Kinahans are firmly back in the headlines following the February 5 shooting of gangster David Byrne at Drumcondra’s Regency Hotel during the weigh-in of Daniel Kinahan’s boxing friend Jamie Kavanagh. Byrne, 32, was aligned to Christy Kinahan’s gang, nowadays said to be led by his son Daniel.
The shooting, which followed the September 2014 killing of Jamie’s gangster father Gerard at a pub near Marbella, was seen as retaliation for the assassination in September last year of Gary Hutch in Miraflores near Fuengirola.
Gary’s uncle Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch is head of the gang that has been blamed for ordering the hit on Byrne as part of an all-out war with the Kinahan gang.
His brother Eddie was shot dead three days after the Regency Hotel attack in a feud which one major criminal warned last week would only end when Daniel Kinahan, who lives in Marbella, was killed.
The criminal, believed to be one of three hitmen who disguised themselves as gardaí to murder rival mobster Byrne, was quoted as saying: ‘We will not rest until Daniel Kinahan is dead.
‘He caused all of this – it won’t end until he is in his grave.’
Like his f ather and brother Daniel, Christy Jr – who is involved with a gym in Puerto Banus near Marbella run by British-born Irish boxer Matthew Macklin – is on bail while the Spanish judicial investigation into them continues.
‘It is a mafia family’