Seized: Kinahans’ €7m drugs cache bought with bitcoin
DRUGS worth €7million and belonging to the Kinahan crime cartel – much of it purchased with the online currency bitcoin – has been seized by gardaí in a joint operation with Dutch police.
Two Dublin men, aged 31 and 37, who are low-level members of the cartel, were caught with the drugs in Co. Meath.
In the Netherlands, a ‘senior cartel figure’ in his early 60s, from Pearse Street in Dublin, and two Limerick criminals – one of whom is a serious criminal involved in money laundering – were arrested as part of the same operation.
Security sources say the three Irishmen arrested in Amsterdam had paid for a ‘significant’ proportion of the drugs seized in Co. Meath using bitcoin.
‘A bitcoin farm has been uncovered, and the three Irishmen were caught in the vicinity of it,’ said a senior source.
Along with his two Limerick associates, the Dublin cartel figure travelled to the Netherlands to arrange the drug shipment to Ireland around a week ago.
The three Irishmen were arrested with four Dutch nationals and a Belgian. In total, Dutch police seized 175kg of cannabis, a ‘significant amount’ of bitcoin, encrypted phones and computers.
‘It is a new departure for the Kinahans to be paying for drugs with bitcoin,’ said a senior source. ‘They are moving with the times I suppose, and obviously believed it was easier for them to transport bitcoin rather than cash to pay for their drugs shipment.’
All of those in custody in Holland are being quizzed for money laundering offences.
The ‘significant’ drugs haul in Kildare, and the arrests in Meath and Amsterdam, are the latest blow to the cartel. Gardaí launched a major offensive against the syndicate as a consequence of their feud with the Hutch gang.
The Mail understands that the two Dubliners were caught load- ing around €800,000 worth of cocaine and cannabis into a van from an industrial unit in Muckerstown, Ashbourne, Co. Meath, yesterday morning.
In a second search operation, which started on Wednesday evening and was underway all day yesterday, a storage unit was examined in Donaghmore in Ashbourne. It is understood that drugs worth more than €6million were discovered at this location.
Gardaí said the haul is worth an estimated total of €7million.
The two men in custody in Ashbourne are considered ‘very low-level’ members of the cartel.
Sources say they were being used by the gang to transport the drugs from A to B after the shipment was sent from Holland.
It is understood that the 31-yearold is from Kinsealy, Co. Dublin. The 37-year-old is from the outskirts of Coolock in north Dublin.
Both are known to gardaí but are not considered ‘serious players’ in the drugs trade.
‘It says a lot about the dwindling power of the cartel that they are using lads of this calibre to handle such a vast quantity of their product,’ said a senior source.
‘They had serious lads in Holland, but the fellas accepting the shipment over here are nobodies, really.’
Working with Dutch police, the operation was led by the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau and Special Crime Task Force in Co. Meath. ‘An Garda Síochána national units within Special Crime Operations continue to target a range of criminality associated with organised crime,’ Assistant Commissioner John O’Driscoll said yesterday.
Assistant Commissioner O’Driscoll is currently in the Netherlands where he is meeting law enforcement personnel from Holland and law enforcement personnel from other jurisdictions.
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