Irish government contacts UAE over crime boss role in Fury-Joshua bout
The Irish government has contacted the United Arab Emirates over the involvement of an Irish crime boss in the proposed heavyweight title fight between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua.
The taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, told the Irish parliament on Thursday that the department of foreign affairs was in touch with UAE officials about a promoter who has been identified by an Irish court as a senior figure in organised crime on a global scale.
Varadkar made the disclosure a day after Fury caused consternation in Ireland with an Instagram post that thanked Daniel Kinahan for getting the most anticipated fight in boxing “over the line”.
Fury’s tribute to Kinahan for apparently clinching a unification deal between Britain’s world heavyweight champions marked another milestone in the Dubliner’s transformation from underworld figure to international boxing promoter.
A high court ruling in 2018 stated he controlled the Kinahan crime gang, a group known in Ireland for trafficking guns and drugs and involvement in a feud with rivals that has claimed dozens of lives.
The Gardai’s Criminal Assets Bureau said he “controlled and managed” the group and had associations that facilitate crime in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America. Also in 2018 a Spanish police officer told a court in Marbella that Kinahan ordered the 2015 murder of an Irish gang rival on the Costa del Sol.
Kinahan, who is not believed to have any criminal convictions, has relocated to Dubai and turned his longstanding interest in boxing into a high-profile, legal business. He was a founder of the boxing group MTK Global – they parted ways – and is an adviser to the Prince of Bahrain’s sports organisation KHK.
Fury’s video confirmed his growing influence: “I’m just after getting off the phone with Daniel Kinahan. He’s just informed me that the biggest fight in British boxing history has just been agreed. Big shout out to Dan. He got this done, literally over the line.”
Alan Kelly, the leader of Ireland’s Labour party, expressed concern in the Dáil, the lower house of parliament, that a “very senior figure in organised crime on a global scale” had “rebranded”
himself as a boxing promoter in the Middle East.
Without directly naming Kinahan, Kelly urged the government to highlight the “parasitical criminal activities of this individual” to sports broadcasters and companies. “Taoiseach, our country has to intervene here.”
Varadkar replied: “I don’t want to say too much about it but I have to say I was rather taken aback to see Tyson Fury and his video the other day and just dropping in that name that you mentioned as if this was not somebody who has quite a chequered history in this state and elsewhere.”
Kinahan escaped unhurt in 2016 when rival gang members dressed as police opened fire during a boxing weigh-in at Dublin’s Regency hotel; he jumped out of a window.
That incident has been cited in recent apparent attempts to overhaul his reputation. In April, the UK rapper J Spades released a song, Major Plans, that floated conspiracy theories, including a claim that police were behind the attack. It has been viewed more than 1.5m times on YouTube.
In May, a slick 14-minute documentary-style video surfaced. Of uncertain provenance, it re-enacted the shooting and repeated some of the conspiracy theories, with an actor playing Kinahan.