Why time is lastly up for Daniel Kinahan and his crime household: They’ve loved a lavish life in Dubai with luxurious mansions and untold riches. But now insiders reveal why their days are numbered… and their brazen bid to flee

It would be hard to imagine two dwellings more different than the drab Oliver Bond council flats in Dublin and the gleaming palaces of Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah which jut out into the Persian Gulf.

The former, a 1930s estate on the south side of the Liffey, is now plagued with crack and heroin dealers.

The latter, set within the Palm’s opulence, boasts every quality Dubai is famed for: overdone, dripping in bling and with all luxuries dialled up to the seventh star.

Yet both places have one thing in common – they have been home to Daniel Kinahan, the feared boss of the international organised crime group which bears his family name. In Dublin it was a poky flat. In Dubai his swish home is said to be a seven-bedroom villa just along the road from the Beckhams.

The rise of the Kinahan empire – founded by the family patriarch and former Dublin taxi driver Christy Kinahan, 68, but now run by his elder son Daniel, 48 – has been spectacularly violent and is now far more than a drugs gang.

The family are valued at around €1billion (£864million) and form part of a ‘super cartel’ with other crime groups which now rivals even the Colombians in their scope and power.

Both father and son, along with younger brother Christopher Jr, 45, were ‘sanctioned’ by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in 2022, which placed a $5million (£3.7million) bounty on their heads and froze assets in the US and supposedly worldwide.

The move was backed by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Ireland’s An Garda Siochana, the UK’s National Crime Agency and Europol.

The then US Ambassador to Ireland Claire Cronin said: ‘The Kinahan trans-national criminal organisation has been accused of a wide range of heinous crimes all around the world, including murder, trafficking in firearms and narcotics.’

But the Kinahans’ reach goes much further: along with a vast property empire centred on their Dubai ‘hide-away’, they have even worked with the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah who helped them with money laundering and weapons.

One might be forgiven for imagining that such men, up to their necks in violence and global criminality, would be keeping their heads low. The opposite is true.

Both Christy, nicknamed ‘Dapper Don’ in his trademark white Panama hat, and Daniel have appeared in public and were photographed not long ago attending a mixed martial arts event at a crowded Dubai stadium.

The images, published this month by the Sunday Times and open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat, were taken last June. They showed father and son living freely, seemingly impervious to their status as two of the world’s most wanted men.

The Daily Mail can reveal, however, that their carefree existence enjoying the sunkissed highlife beloved of social media influencers could soon come to an end because of the war in Iran and the daily barrages of drones and missiles aimed at Dubai.

Now the safety of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is threatened – along with the gilded lifestyle, the tourism industry and the property market – the authorities’ apparently indifferent attitude towards the Kinahans is changing, which could spell an end to their existence in their lavish bolthole.

One expat security source in the UAE who has studied the Kinahans with interest believes the government is already starting to change their position.

‘The missile and drone strikes have strengthened the view here that they need the US more than they need Iran,’ says the source.

‘So the Kinahans, given their links to Hezbollah and their pariah status with the DEA, are starting to become an embarrassment to the UAE – and this place is all about image. Their days are numbered, I’m convinced of it.’

Almost exactly ten years ago an attempted gangland hit on Daniel in Dublin led the Kinahans to leave Ireland and settle in Dubai.

A group of masked men carrying AK-47 assault rifles opened fire at a boxing event in the ballroom of a hotel in the city, shooting three people, one of whom bled to death. Daniel, a part-time boxing promoter, had meanwhile escaped through an emergency exit.

He left carnage in his wake – the attempt on his life sparked a full-scale gang war across the city, causing a staggering 18 deaths.

The father and son have been living the luxury lifestyle ever since.

A highlight was Daniel’s 2017 wedding to former gangster’s moll Caoimhe Robinson under a huge chandelier in the ballroom of the iconic Burj Al Arab hotel.

Her ex partner Micka ‘the Panda’ Kelly had been murdered in Dublin in 2011 by a gunman who left nothing to chance, shooting him 14 times before reversing a car over his body.

The guests at the wedding included former heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury. The other attendees were a veritable Who’s Who of the international cocaine trade, most of whom made up the other members of their super cartel.

‘Among them were Ridouan Taghi, a Moroccan-Dutch man responsible for several murders in the Netherlands; Edin Gacanin, a Bosnian-Dutch man who led the Tito and Dino cartel; Ricardo “El Rico” Riquelme Vega, a major Chilean drug importer; and Raffaele Imperiale, a debonair Italian linked to the Camorra (a Mafia-type criminal organisation),’ the New Yorker wrote in 2024.

Even before the DEA added the Kinahans to their most wanted list, Caoimhe Robinson – who was not named in the DEA document – was becoming quite the wheeler-dealer in the UAE real estate market.

As well as the seven-bed on the Palm, Robinson has owned or lived in some of the swankiest addresses in Dubai.

She once rented a two-bedroom apartment in a luxury tower by Dubai Marina called Iris Blue. And she owned a four-bed with 3,200 sq ft of floor space near the top of the 91-storey Elite Residences Tower – one of the tallest residential buildings in the world.

She then bought a six-bedroom villa in Parkway Vistas in 2018 for €4.3million (£3.7million today) and sold it in 2022 for €5.2million (£4.5million) following the announcement of US sanctions on the Kinahans.

Robinson also bought a huge unfinished £1.5million villa 30 minutes from Dubai’s tourist hub in the gated village of Wadi Al Safa 5. What she plans for it is not clear.

The 1,900 sq metre house, designed in the Spanish mission style, is now boarded up and covered in graffiti, standing out from its neighbours with their neatly trimmed lawns.

In theory, in order to comply with the US Treasury’s sanctions order, the UAE government should have frozen the Kinahans’ assets. While the Emiratis claim to have taken ‘appropriate action’, the US and Irish authorities remain sceptical.

Christy and his younger Turkish wife Neslihan Yildirim certainly aren’t slumming it, for instance – they live in a plush apartment in the complex of City Walk in the Al Wasl district, set above high-end shops and Michelin-starred restaurants.

He drives a Mercedes and introduces himself as ‘consultant’ Chris Vincent to new neighbours, while the couple’s two children attend an international school nearby. Remarkably, Christy, under his Chris Vincent pseudonym, is a prolific Google reviewer of restaurants, hotels and even Dubai government offices on occasion, as Bellingcat revealed. He comes across as a demanding customer and lost patience with one upmarket cafe called Mitts and Trays on Bluewaters Island near the marina, explaining: ‘Last visit, I walked out before food was delivered because of the length of wait, which is not so bad for adults, but when you have children with you it can be a hassle,’ he posted.

Perhaps tellingly, given his real job, at another establishment he became irritated when the waitress called him ‘boss’.

‘I did explain that I did not like to be called boss and please could you call me “Chris, Mr Vincent or Sir”,’ he wrote.

‘The waitress tittered, I thought nothing more of it until we were paying the bill (my friend was kind enough to pay the bill) and were about to leave when the same waitress made a point of saying “thanks boss!”

‘Other than my sensitive disposition and taking the dining experience in it’s [sic] entirety I would rate this establishment a four-star.’

It emerged that far from taking action against him after he arrived in Dubai, the UAE granted Christy Kinahan an identity card, and he – no doubt keen to praise the government – chronicled the process of renewing it for the benefit of other Google users.

‘I visited the Department of Economic Development in the Dubai Mall, November 7, 2021 at about 11.30am. I went there to use the interactive machine to update my Emirates ID,’ he wrote.

‘The only interaction with the staff that I had was with a security officer, who was most helpful in guiding me to the machine and then advising me on its use. Based on my experience whilst visiting this office I rate this visit five star.’

All this while the Irish government was sending ministerial delegations to Dubai in vain to call for the Kinahans to be deported.

Yet while the Kinahans’ assets in jurisdictions such as Ireland, the UK and the US are frozen, there is confusion concerning how the gangleaders would be treated if the American or Irish authorities caught up with them. The US ‘bounty’ on their heads does not constitute an indictment or formal accusation they have committed a crime. It is for the supply of ‘information leading to their arrest or conviction’.

Equally puzzling is a Gardai file recommending that charges be brought against the Kinahans, which has been sitting with the Irish director of public prosecutions for three years.

Gardai told the Daily Mail: ‘An investigation file into the Kinahan organised crime group has been submitted to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions,’ adding the inquiry was ‘ongoing.’

At this stage, it is important to say Daniel Kinahan could not be contacted by the Daily Mail, but in 2021 he issued a statement denying he was a criminal.

‘I am not a part of a criminal gang or any conspiracy. I have no convictions,’ he said. ‘I have dedicated myself to my work in boxing for more than 15 years. I am proud to say today that I have helped organise over a dozen major world title fights.

‘I continue to be involved in planning multiple record-breaking and exciting world title fights.’ He added his success in the world of boxing ‘has led to an increase in the campaign against me’.

Even so, officers from Ireland’s Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (DOCB) are in communication with their Dubai counterparts in relation to the Kinahans and their movements over there.

Crucially, Ireland and the UAE signed a formal extradition treaty in October 2024 to facilitate the return of people accused or convicted of serious crimes.

Chief Superintendent Seamus Boland, head of the DOCB, meanwhile, says the Kinahans no longer have the same stranglehold on the Irish drugs trade that they previously enjoyed. He said: ‘They do not hold the same control on organised crime in Ireland as they did pre-2016, that’s for definite… A lot of what they would be involved in would be in other jurisdictions in relation to cocaine trafficking, more so than here. And probably because their main operators here in Ireland have been to a good extent brought to justice.’

Retired Garda Assistant Commissioner Pat Leahy told the Daily Mail that many of the ‘second and third tiers’ of the mob were now out of circulation, adding: ‘A lot of them are serving big heavy sentences and some great investigations went in at home and abroad.’

With the noose beginning to tighten, the Kinahans may well decide to take off for pastures new. But retired Garda Assistant Commissioner Pat Leahy is not convinced they will be able to.

‘I’m sure they are [making plans] and they’ll have been at that for a while, because it’s an unsafe environment for them now,’ he explains.

‘I wouldn’t like to be depending on any nation state if I was in that level of criminality… No matter where they go, they are not going to be fully safe under the umbrella of some state, so I do think the leverage is there now to drop the net on them.’

‘I think they will be caught and escorted by the Irish police and collected to be brought straight to court.’

Additional reporting: DAVID RALEIGH in Dublin