As Daniel Kinahan's extradition to Ireland looms, the man who wrote the book on the KINAHAN CARTEL takes us into the world of the Godfather-obsessed gangster and reveals how his lust for publicity would ultimately lead to his downfall...

Published: 00:09, 19 April 2026 | Updated: 00:09, 19 April 2026 Daniel Kinahan will go down in history as The Godfather-obsessed gangster whose lust for publicity engineered his own downfall. The 48-year-old was destined for a life in organised crime from a young age, thanks to his father Christy’s drug empire. However, it was Daniel's decision to abandon the low profile which had served his dad so well that would spark a two decade-long international police operation to bring him to justice. Kinahan Junior first came to garda attention in his late teens, as a mouthy, aggressive enforcer for his father's drug-dealing operations around the Oliver Bond flat complex in working class Dublin's south inner city. Thus it was no surprise when he was charged with assault following a vicious attack on two gardai at Shelbourne Park racing track in Dublin in 2001, though the charges were later dropped. As someone with a keen interest in both sport and gambling, Kinahan sought to expand his father's interests beyond drugs into both. In May 2004, City of London police probing alleged race-fixing in Britain found the ambitious 27-year-old was deeply involved in the attempted scam. Detectives watched as he flew into Leeds Bradford airport and met with three others, including Yorkshire racing trainer Miles Rodgers. The four were followed as they set off on a three-hour drive to the home of Irish jockey Kieren Fallon near Newmarket, but turned back in the small hours when they spotted the police tail. When the case came to court in 2007, it heard intercepts from Rodgers' phone, in which he referred to Kinahan, who was again not charged, as a formidable character called 'D'. Rodgers told the man on the other end of the line that while he had met many 'menacing' people in the course of his business, they paled beside 'D'. 'He was only a little fella', he said, 'but you know when you've been spoken to'. By now, Kinahan had moved to Spain with his father as Ireland's most notorious family sought to put themselves out of reach of gardai. But when Spanish authorities launched their own two-year surveillance operation against the Kinahan gang in 2008 following a gangland murder on the Costa, and massive drug seizures in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and in Kildare, they gained more insight into the future head of the operation. Daniel Kinahan pictured with Tyson Fury in the Middle East Daniel Kinahan was destined for a life in organised crime from a young age, thanks to the drug empire run by his father Christy, above The Irish Mail's Owen Conlon co-wrote The Cartel with crime reporter Stephen Breen Daniel was quickly identified as the head of the cartel’s 'hard' drug-dealing faction, a man enthralled by the realistic war game training he had contracted for his enforcers from a former special forces soldier based near Malaga. “They have a group there and a house, and we have to go in and take someone out of the house, get past security and take over the house,” Daniel told someone back in Dublin as Spanish police listened in. “Later there’s another group who take us out into the country and they give us a radio and a two-hour headstart. If they catch you, you’ll end up in hospital.” Spanish police swooped on the cartel in May 2008, but serious charges never materialised. As the Kinahans quietly rebuilt their operations in the following years, Daniel decided to move into ‘sportswashing’ his reputation. A long-time friend of Birmingham middleweight Matthew Macklin, he bankrolled Macklin’s MTK Global operation, which managed the careers of scores of promising fighters. While sport also presented money-laundering opportunities, gardai believe Kinahan - a keen amateur pugilist himself - simply wanted to preen as a mover and shaker within boxing. MTK offered very favourable financial conditions and fighters - familiar with promoters taking a large slice of their earnings - eagerly signed up. Kinahan didn’t want their money, as the cartel he ran was already judged by gardai to be worth around €1bn. However, questions were being asked about MTK’s funding, which only increased when the notorious Regency Hotel attack on an MTK-organised event in Dublin in February 2016 left gang member David Byrne dead. Gunmen storm the Regency Hotel in the notorious attack on an MTK-organised event in Dublin The Kinahan retaliation was swift and bloody, killing 16 people - including two entirely innocent men. One murder, that of Hutch gangster Gary Hanley, was foiled by a Garda surveillance op and listening devices they placed in the hit squad’s cars left no doubt who had ordered it. ‘I had a bit of craic with D last night,’ Kinahan goon Liam Brannigan bragged to one of the hired hitmen. ‘I was telling him, ‘this is where we’re at, blah, blah, blah’. He goes ‘mate, relax yourself. Don’t push it. It’ll happen, don’t push it’, he said. ‘As long as everyone stays safe, I don’t give a f*** how long it takes, ya know what I mean?’ Despite all this, MTK fighters like former British IBF super bantamweight champ Carl Frampton, ex-Irish Olympian Michael Conlan and one-time Commonwealth middleweight title holder Billy Joe Saunders all defended the company and the man behind it. ‘Daniel Kinahan was (the) only person to look after me in boxing,’ former MTK lightweight Peter McDonagh posted on Twitter in 2022. ‘(The) rest of the boxing promoters and managers used and abused me’. It was this apparently caring attitude which saw washed-up heavyweight champ Tyson Fury, then snorting cocaine and downing ‘a bottle of vodka a day’, walk into the MTK embrace in 2017. Kinahan took him in at his base in Marbella, helped him off the drink and drugs and got him back in the ring. And when Fury bounced back to win the world heavyweight title in 2020, it was Kinahan who he thanked for organising his next big moneyspinning bout against fellow Briton Anthony Joshua. ‘I'm just after getting off the phone there with Daniel Kinahan,’ he said in an Instagram video. ‘Big shout out Dan, he got this done. Literally over the line. Two fight deal. Tyson Fury vs Anthony Joshua next year.’ A selfie from 2020 shows how close Daniel Kinahan was to boxer Tyson Fury The $5m bounty placed on Kinahan’s head by US officials in 2022 ended Kinahan’s dream of being a sporting mogul, as previous allies ran for cover, terrified of ending up in court themselves. The $5m bounty placed on Kinahan’s head by US officials in 2022 ended Kinahan’s dream of being a sporting mogul It took four more years before he would land in custody in Dubai, but the man who styled himself on Michael Corleone now faces dying in prison instead like John Gotti. 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