In May 2008, Kinahan was arrested and put in custody while the Belgian police continued their money-laundering investigation. At the same time three properties were frozen and a number of bank accounts blocked. While he was out of the picture, Kinahan’s sons and John Cunningham assumed control of the operation.
A year later, Kinahan was released from custody but was ordered to remain in Belgium. In September 2009 the Antwerp Correctional Court convicted the gang boss on ten counts of money-laundering. The presiding judge, Luc Potargent, described how the sophisticated mobster had done everything in his power to undermine the judicial process. He also accused the Godfather of refusing to clarify where the money came from, who its real owner was, and the true nature of his relationship with the string of offshore companies. Kinahan took advantage of the Belgian justice system and was granted bail when he lodged an appeal against the conviction. In any event he would only have had to spend a few months inside. Under Belgian law a convict only has to serve onethird of certain sentences – and Kinahan had already been in prison for a year.
In the meantime Kinahan was allowed to return to Spain, where he quickly resumed his position at the helm of his empire. The Dapper Don’s organized crime syndicate was made up of a core of 12 senior members including his sons, John Cunningham, Indian businessman Jasvinder Singh Kamoo and Kevin Lynch, a convicted armed robber from Ballyfermot. Described as a ‘very sinister’ thug with connections to the IRA, Lynch had become a confidant of Kinahan while they were both doing time in Portlaoise. Other key figures in the network were Gary Hutch and a Dublin-based businessman who owned a number of launderettes in the city. An accountant from Estepona in southern Spain and her English boyfriend were involved in looking after the group’s very healthy finances.
The Dapper Don and his associates had become globe-trotting businessmen in their quest to launder their cash. In 2009 alone investigators discovered that the syndicate had transferred over €16 million from 22 bank accounts. Money was sent to the UK, Spain and Holland to pay for drugs. The profits from the deals were then moved to countries all over the world. John Cunningham and one of the gang’s bagmen from Dublin visited Brazil to transfer another €15 million, as part of a major property deal. In October 2009, Daniel Kinahan travelled to Dubai, in the company of two associates from England and Morocco, to supervise the movement of cash to banks there. In November, Christy Kinahan travelled to China for the purpose of setting up a meat export business with the Chinese Mafia. It was suspected that the real purpose of the deal was to launder money through bogus companies in China, while drugs were trafficked from there to the West. Kinahan also began trading in various commodities markets.
In the same month Daniel Kinahan and a member of Gary Hutch’s Dublin mob visited South Africa to do business with an international drug gang based in Cape Town. The gang’s English money-launderer was known to have transferred Stg£10 million to a bank in Zurich that same month. The money was then transferred to an offshore account in Antigua and Barbuda. The gang’s agents in cities such as Liverpool, Dublin, Amsterdam and Antwerp were also transferring huge amounts of cash through Western Union, using bogus names and documentation.
Like a major multi-national company, the mob invested heavily in state-of-the-art technology. Kinahan and his close circle had learned from the mistakes of the past and tended to keep their phone conversations to under a minute. When the Dapper Don arrived back in Spain from Belgium, he invested money in satellite phones which could not be intercepted by police. The organization had access to a helicopter, which was used to move money, drugs and people. They even paid €200,000 for a sea-going speed boat.
The sheer size and capacity of the syndicate’s criminal empire was truly astonishing. It was an extremely efficient and sophisticated operation. Irish criminals had come a very long way since Larry Dunne imported his first shipment of heroin.
But there was trouble brewing for the Dapper Don. A massive international investigation had been launched in 2008 which was spearheaded by the Spanish national police force, the Guardia Civil. The ‘Irish Mafia’ had grown so powerful that it could no longer be ignored. The Kinahan syndicate had turned the Costa del Sol into a hub for Irish organized crime. The investigation was partially prompted by a string of gangland shootings and murders involving Kinahan’s mob. In February 2008 notorious gangland hit man Paddy Doyle, from the north inner-city, was shot dead, just outside Puerto Banus. He had become a liability to his former associates. Another member of the mob had also shot and injured one of their Moroccan associates. In April 2010 the Kinahan syndicate was responsible for the high-profile murder of notorious crime boss Eamon Dunne, aka ‘the Don’ (see Chapter 26).
A month later the international police investigation finally moved against Kinahan and his organization. When Kinahan and his inner circle were arrested, they were brought before the courts in a blaze of publicity, escorted by heavily armed cops. In most European jurisdictions, including Spain, suspects can be arrested and held without charge as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. The Spanish authorities revealed that they were investigating serious crimes including murder, drug- and gun-trafficking and money-laundering. International arrest warrants were also issued by Spanish magistrates for Kinahan’s Dublin bagman Mathew Dunne, and for Fat Freddie Thompson and Gary Hutch.
Kinahan spent six months in prison before he was released on bail. In 2011 the Belgian authorities sought his extradition to serve the remainder of his money-laundering sentence after his appeal there was turned down. In August 2011 a Spanish court granted the request and the Dapper Don was returned to Belgium. When he finishes his sentence he will be returned to Spain. Meanwhile the rest of the gang members were released on bail and ordered to surrender their passports. Cunningham, who claimed to a judge that he was just a tourist, was one of the first to be set free.
At the time of writing, the investigation into the Kinahan/Cunningham syndicate was still ongoing. According to police sources it may take a number of years before the complex web of international intrigue has been unravelled.
Despite his absence, the Dapper Don’s organization regrouped. The final chapter in the story of the former inner-city drug-pusher has not yet been written.
25. Marlo’s Story
The violent life and death of Martin ‘Marlo’ Hyland can be summed up in the words of the seventeenth-century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes: ‘The life of man is nasty, brutish and short.’ The script for Hyland’s life could have come from a gangster movie or even a Shakespearean tragedy. His story is a paradigm of the stereotypical modern-day Godfather. A young hood starts off in life as a petty crook and makes it to the place where every aspiring criminal wants to be – the head of the ‘family’.
In Gangland the laws of the jungle dictate the order of things. Power is maintained through fear and violence. In this predatory world potential challengers wait in the shadows for any sign of weakness or vulnerability on the part of the Godfather. Then power is taken – at the point of a gun. A sudden, violent death is an inevitable occupational hazard for the modern mob boss. In order to protect his business, he must be prepared to murder anyone, even former friends, whom he suspects of posing a threat. At the same time there is the ever-present danger of being busted by the police.
Applying these laws is how Marlo Hyland embarked on his journey to become Public Enemy Number One. He got rid of his boss and mentor, the Psycho, PJ Judge and built a powerful criminal organization. But his time at the top was ‘nasty, brutish and short’. Hyland’s days were numbered when he became weak and his organization began to implode, after sustained attack from the police. And like the wounded leader of a pride of lions, he was replaced when a younger, ambitious opponent moved in for the kill.
During his reign Marlo ushered in a new approach to organized crime. He tried to create one big, nationwide crime corporation, by bringing various gangs and terrorist groups together. It was a plan worthy of the Sicilian or American Mafia of old.
Hyland planned an underworld where there would be an ‘understanding’ between the various mobs. Territory would be agreed by mutual consent and negotiation; resources would be pooled for the profit of all the corporate members, such as cash pools for drug shipments and hit men to deal with problems. In Marlo’s new gangland order everyone, as they say in Sicily, could ‘draw from the well’.
Marlo worked hard to manoeuvre himself into a position of power and influence. Hyland liked being in control of the action and secretly pulled the strings in several gangland feuds. He was good at networking and nurtured the image of a strong man who could get things done. He inspired loyalty among his closest associates, some of whom were prepared to do anything he asked. Within a few years of Judge’s violent end, Hyland controlled a large gang of up to twenty of the most violent criminals to emerge in the Noughties. All of them were staunchly loyal to their boss. The group included thugs John Daly, Paddy Doyle, Johnny Mangan, Willie Hynes and Eamon Dunne. Marlo also established strong links with gangs throughout the country, including the notorious McCarthy/Dundons in Limerick.
By the Noughties Marlo’s main drug-supplier was the Kinahan syndicate. He also worked closely with another major player in the drug-dealing rackets, Troy Jordan, who was based in County Kildare. Originally from Tallaght, West Dublin, Jordan was involved with the INLA and John Gilligan. He came to prominence as a result of the gangland upheaval that followed the Veronica Guerin murder. He was the target of several major Garda investigations which resulted in large drug seizures. But, like Marlo, Jordan remained a safe distance away from the merchandise.
Hyland also enjoyed a long-standing partnership with well-known members of Sinn Féin/IRA who were on his payroll, including the senior figures who’d ‘advised’ him to get rid of PJ Judge. Hyland supplied guns and getaway cars for Provo murders and heists which they didn’t want connected to the Movement. He was also involved in a multi-million-Euro VAT fraud with his Provo pals. So-called C2 fraud was a popular source of income to increase the Sinn Féin/IRA war-chest.
A Criminal Assets Bureau investigation into Hyland’s financial affairs exposed his close business relationship with John Noonan, the Sinn Féin and IRA member who’d helped start the Concerned Parents Against Drugs (CPAD) organization. The hypocritical republican gangster, who had gone to the brink of war with the General twenty years earlier, had been laundering his money through bank accounts controlled by Marlo. Noonan became a major CAB target and was hit with a tax bill for over €2 million. He told investigators that the money he put through the drug-dealer’s accounts belonged to Sinn Féin and the IRA.
Hyland also used the prison system to network. He acted as a benefactor to villains on the inside whom he considered to be of future worth to him. Marlo regularly visited Patrick ‘Dutchie’ Holland and INLA mass-murderer Dessie O’Hare. Prison records showed that Hyland visited Dutchie at least 13 times in two years. The generous Godfather regularly lodged money into the accounts of individual prisoners so that they could buy goods from the prison tuck shop – and drugs from other lags. Hyland kept €50 from the profits of every kilo of drugs he sold to give to the wives and girlfriends of associates who were doing time. Like John Gilligan, Marlo worked hard at being popular.
Hyland began to feature as a target for the GNDU shortly after the Psycho’s murder. In October 1997, one of his associates, Noel Mullen, was caught with £400,000 worth of hash he was moving for his boss. As a result he was jailed for five years. Less than a year later, in April 1998, the GNDU chalked up another significant victory against Marlo when they seized £2 million worth of hashish. As a result his loyal henchman Willie Hynes was jailed for six and a half years. But the seizures had little effect on Marlo’s operation. They only accounted for a fraction of the number of shipments he was organizing.
By the new millennium, Hyland controlled a huge wholesale drug business, importing cocaine, cannabis and heroin. At one stage he was importing up to several hundred kilos of cannabis every few weeks alone. He was making a tidy profit in the process, selling it at a wholesale price of €1,100 per kilo. In addition, he was bringing in weapons for his gang and to sell to other villains.
Marlo’s gang were also involved in the systematic theft of high-performance cars, which were stolen to order and sold to a gang specializing in high-spec motors. The leader of that mob was a Lebanese-born thug, Hassan Hassan, who shipped the cars for sale in the Middle East. Marlo also supplied getaway cars to other gangs. In March 1999 cars stolen by Hyland’s gang were used in two shooting incidents. The IRA used one in a gun attack on a drug addict called Alan Byrne. Byrne was a witness for the State against members of the CPAD and Sinn Féin who had been charged with beating his friend, Josie Dwyer, to death. Byrne survived the gun attack and later testified in court. The second car was used in the gangland murder of 34-year-old drug-dealer Tom O’Reilly in Rathfarnham.
Detective Inspector Brian Sherry had overall responsibility for all criminal investigation in West Dublin. Marlo had been his number one target for several years. He recalled: ‘Marlo was a very interesting, but not a very pleasant character to deal with. There is no doubt that he was the first criminal who tried to involve everyone in his enterprise. He was a facilitator who brought the different gangs under the one umbrella, in one network, a bit like the Mafia. He was involved in everything that was happening. It was a very dangerous situation to have one man in such a powerful position. He was pulling all the strings. Before his death Marlo’s name was coming up in investigations all over the place. At one stage it seemed like nothing happened in this town without some involvement from him. In the end he became too big for his boots.’
By 2004, Marlo was firmly established as the Mr Big of the largest criminal network in the country. The mob was also involved in armed robberies and protection rackets. Marlo acted as a consultant for other criminal groups, planning robberies and drug deals, for which he charged a fee or received a slice of the profits.
Between 2002 and 2004, Hyland’s gang began targeting security vans delivering cash to ATM machines in Dublin and surrounding counties. With the help of corrupt employees, the mob had identified a major weakness in the delivery system. Between October 2003 and July 2004, the aptly dubbed ‘Hole in the Wall’ gang got away with an estimated €3 million. Hyland and his associates were soaring to the top of the Gardaí’s ‘most wanted’ list.
Inevitably the Godfather used an ever-increasing spiral of violence to maintain control of his organization. His gang had been linked to the murder in November 2001 of Finglas hard man Gerard ‘Concrete’ Fitzgerald. A year earlier, Fitzgerald had ordered the murder of his own nephew, Francis Fitzgerald, who had been a member of Marlo’s mob. And in 2005 Hyland ordered the gruesome execution of 26-year-old drug-dealer Andrew ‘Chicore’ Dillon from Finglas.
Dillon had been a member of the Westies gang before he moved over to Hyland’s mob and he took part in several of the security van heists. In 2004, Dillon was accused of stealing drugs belonging to veteran Finglas drug-trafficker John McKeown, an associate of Hyland. Dillon had sold the drugs and put the money he made from the deal in the bank. When McKeown demanded payment, the hapless thief couldn’t get his hands on the money – the CAB had frozen the account. Dillon was forced to flee to the UK after McKeown had tried to murder him.
Hyland decided to lure the gangland fugitive back to Ireland – and make an example of him. ‘Marlo sent him word that he could come back and that everything would be all right,’ recalled Brian Sherry. ‘We knew that everything would not be all right and tried to advise him to stay where he was. But Dillon was really a harmless idiot who got in over his head. He wanted to believe everything was sorted because he couldn’t survive on his own in England. It was a big mistake.’
Hyland welcomed the errant villain when he returned in May 2005. He purposely lulled Dillon into a false sense of security. Three months later, on 17 August, Dillon met Eamon Dunne and two other thugs. Dunne told him they were going to col
lect a getaway car for a heist. The gang then drove to a lane off Ashbourne Road, north-west Dublin, where they shot Dillon three times in the face and head. Dillon’s body was then dumped in a ditch. Eamon Dunne had proved his credentials as a cold-blooded killer. Over the next five years he would be responsible for at least 13 more murders.
Eamon ‘the Don’ Dunne was born in February 1976 and grew up in Blackhorse Grove in Cabra. He came from a respectable family and was not driven into a life of crime as a result of deprivation. He was described as being highly intelligent, achieved good results in his Leaving Certificate and was better educated than most of his associates. After school he worked for a short time in a meat factory but soon gave it up for a more lucrative criminal career. Dunne was one of the up-and-coming hoods who were greatly impressed with the glamorous lifestyle of the Godfather in the area – Marlo Hyland. He and a group of other teenage villains joined Hyland’s drug-dealing pyramid. Over time Dunne became one of Marlo’s most trusted associates.
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