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Previously on Hot Money,

1:00

US undercover agents made a connection

1:02

between money launderers working for European

1:04

drug traffickers and top level officials

1:07

in Iran. It was part of a ski to

1:09

help the regime evade American sanctions

1:12

and source heavy weapons.

1:16

This time, a whole new money laundering

1:18

operation comes into view, invented

1:21

by the man at the top of the Dubai Supercartel,

1:25

Daniel Kinahan. Back

1:27

in episode four, we left him living a

1:29

life of luxury in Dubai. He just

1:32

got married and business was booming

1:34

as the supercartel joined forces

1:36

to grow their trafficking operations. Across

1:38

Europe and Daniel his

1:40

new career as a boxing manager. It was

1:42

about to take off. Remember

1:44

back in Spain, he helped open a gym called

1:47

MTK and signed up and coming

1:49

boxers from Ireland. In the UK, he

1:51

set them up in nice villas and hired the best

1:53

trainers and arranged their fights. Unlike

1:56

his father, Daniel appeared to like

1:58

being a public figure to revel

2:00

in the attention he got. He was living

2:02

a dual life, enjoying the status

2:05

of a top drug trafficker and the image

2:07

of a high flying boxing promoter. It

2:10

seemed to me that he thought boxing was

2:12

his path to being accepted as a legitimate

2:14

businessman, but something inside

2:17

him meant he just couldn't leave the world

2:19

of crime behind. Now

2:22

it's twenty twenty, Daniel kinahans

2:24

in Dubai and he's taken his boxing promotion

2:26

business there with him. He's working on

2:28

the biggest boxing deal of his life

2:31

and if he pulls it off, it will catapult

2:33

him to the very top of the sport.

2:36

Hello there, I'm just after getting off the phone

2:38

with Daniel Kinahan.

2:40

That's world famous heavyweight champion Tyson

2:43

Fury. He's a fast talking

2:45

shaven headed nineteen stone Man

2:48

Mountain and on that afternoon he's

2:50

even more excitable than usual. He

2:52

posts on social media, He's

2:54

just informed.

2:55

Me that the biggest fight

2:57

in Bridges boxing history has just been agreed.

3:00

Gear that my boy.

3:03

Big shout out done.

3:04

He got this done.

3:05

Two fight deal Tyson

3:07

Fury versus Anthony josh next

3:10

year.

3:11

The announcement it stuns the world

3:14

of boxing. After

3:16

winning a world heavyweight title five years

3:18

earlier, Fury's career it's been in a

3:20

slump, but since meeting Daniel

3:22

Kinahan, he's made an epic comeback.

3:25

He's beaten the previously undefeated

3:27

and reigning WBC champion Deonte

3:29

Wilder in this huge Las Vegas

3:31

showdown, and that means Fury's

3:34

upcoming bout against fellow British heavyweight

3:36

Anthony Joshua. It's immediately billed

3:39

as one of the biggest fights in the history of

3:41

the sport. It's going

3:43

to be an international extravaganza broadcast

3:45

across the world. Pay per view sales

3:47

and sponsorship are going to generate hundreds

3:50

of millions of dollars and Fury he's

3:52

crediting Daniel Kinahan with pulling the whole

3:54

thing together, and Daniel's

3:57

not only organizing these box office prize

3:59

fights, He's also started to rub shoulders

4:01

with Royalty. Around

4:03

the same time that Fury's fights announced,

4:06

Daniels signed up as a special advisor on

4:08

combat sports by a company belonging

4:10

to the Prince of Bahrain. The press

4:12

release describes him as an international boxing

4:15

powerbroker. And shortly

4:17

before that, Daniel shows up with a charity

4:19

gala in Kazakhstan wearing a tuxedo

4:22

and sitting next to him is none other than

4:24

Bob Aarum, one of the most influential

4:26

figures in boxing history.

4:29

Aram.

4:29

He's promoted Muhammad Ali and he's an inductee

4:31

into the Boxing Hall of Fame.

4:34

We have great confidence in Kenahan.

4:37

We think he's very very,

4:39

very honest, very astute.

4:41

He has great connections.

4:43

And now he's singing the praises of

4:46

Daniel Kinahan.

4:47

You know, I like to deal

4:49

with guys, no nonsense, people whose

4:52

word is their bond, and

4:55

that's what it's been with

4:57

Daniel.

4:58

But just as Daniel Kinahan's reputation

5:01

as a boxing magnate starts to soar,

5:04

some people are starting to look more closely

5:06

at the source of his fortune.

5:13

I'm Miles Johnson and from the Financial

5:15

Times and Pushkin Industries. This is

5:17

Hot Money, season two, the New Narcos,

5:21

episode seven, Against the Ropes.

5:45

The thing that first pulled me into this story was

5:47

when a source told me, if you really

5:49

want to understand the exploding European

5:51

cocaine trade, you need to take a close

5:54

look at a murder in a small Dutch town.

5:57

And that led me to an Amsterdam murder

5:59

broker, a Dublin safehouse, the

6:01

Kinnahans, and then the Iranian

6:03

government. For a while,

6:06

the way this connection worked, it just wasn't

6:08

clear, and then we found something.

6:11

The thing that links these unlikely characters together

6:14

is the mechanics of sanctions of Asian

6:17

and money laundering. But

6:19

if anyone can help me really understand

6:22

how all of this works, it's a guy called

6:24

Quentin mug.

6:25

I'm a French police commander. I

6:28

am currently working in the EUROPEOL

6:31

which he's the European

6:33

agency for criminal police.

6:36

I first met Quentin after other police

6:38

contacts told me that he was one of the best in the

6:40

world at complex money laundering cases.

6:43

He's got dark, floppy hair, a stubbly

6:45

beard, and he talks with the unassuming

6:47

calmness of a gallic colombo. He

6:50

doesn't miss a trick if you're trying to launder

6:52

your drugs money in a shipman of seafood.

6:55

He's the sort of guy who'll swivel around at the last

6:57

minute and say just one more

6:59

thing.

7:01

You know, instinct kicks in. You

7:03

tell me is that you imported a hundred thousand

7:06

euros worth of shrimps. But what shrimp

7:08

was at a frozen

7:10

shrimp big streams? But I guess cash scrips?

7:12

Then what was exactly in the continue? You

7:14

don't know. That's that's how it.

7:16

Works, Quentin. He lives

7:19

and breathes this sort of stuff, and he's actually written

7:21

a book about it. It's called gen Salle

7:23

or Dirty Money.

7:25

So I started to pick up on these aspects

7:27

of the job because essentially everybody

7:29

wakes up for money, including the criminals,

7:32

and I really started to enjoy

7:34

it.

7:35

Quentin actually worked on part of the DEA's

7:37

investigation into Iman Kobesi and

7:39

ended up arresting a French associate of hers.

7:42

He says there's one important reason

7:44

why drug traffickers might end up working

7:47

with someone like Kobesi. Criminals

7:50

and sanctioned governments. They've got a problem in

7:52

common. They can't just freely move money

7:54

around the international banking system,

7:56

so both need to find more creative methods,

7:59

methods that law enforcement agencies can't

8:01

track.

8:02

And that is the beauty of it, to be honest, because

8:05

basically this appeal

8:08

for and a NIMI is something

8:10

that the wood underworld has in common.

8:13

As a cocaine market in Europe has boomed,

8:16

massive amounts of dirty cash are started to

8:18

pile up and to make their businesses

8:20

work to pay suppliers in Latin

8:22

America, pay henchmen, or buy

8:24

a mansion in Dubai. The car tells

8:27

they need to keep that money from getting stuck.

8:29

It's a critical logistical headache of being

8:31

a drug trafficker but moving

8:33

billions secretly around the world. It's

8:36

actually quite hard. Imagine

8:38

a drug trafficker has say ten million

8:40

dollars in the Netherlands and.

8:42

You would like that to be in Dubai.

8:45

So now he's got a number of options. You could move

8:48

it himself, as that's been setting some cash

8:50

careers, taking zerisk of being spudied at

8:52

the airport. He could try to transform

8:55

it into something else, maybe

8:57

jewelry, wa cheese, whatever. But

8:59

again you need to transport it. You could try

9:01

to hide these tracks by

9:04

converting that money into other

9:06

goods such as cars, and

9:08

then ship them away, get the cars

9:11

somewhere in another country, sell them,

9:13

justify the profit and take it away. But then you

9:15

need companies, you need important But it's complete lydy.

9:17

Oh, you can just pick up your phone.

9:19

Pick up your phone and call a money

9:21

broker. They're specialists

9:23

to operate in a huge underground banking

9:26

system and it's critical infrastructure

9:28

for the underworld.

9:29

So I would simply contact

9:31

the money brokers. The money broker would

9:34

send me a money collector. That

9:37

money collector will come to me, usually

9:39

with a banknote.

9:41

It's pretty hard to feel comfortable handing

9:43

over massive suitcases of cash to a

9:45

stranger, so they've come up with a sort

9:47

of verification system. The

9:49

person picking up the cash they have to show a

9:51

serial number of a specific banknote

9:53

to prove their identity.

9:55

And it was in two three days, I would have an equivalent

9:57

talment of money in the country I

9:59

want.

10:00

So it's sort of like a secret currency exchange

10:03

service, but for major criminals.

10:05

But the concept that took me a little

10:07

while to get my head around is that the actual

10:10

physical cash it doesn't ever move.

10:13

It stays in the same place. The

10:17

networks have supplies of cash in different

10:19

countries, in places like warehouses,

10:22

and instead of moving it, they simply

10:24

pay you out from the supply they have in

10:26

the place you need it, minus a commission.

10:29

Of course, this works because

10:31

people doing the reverse trade to you, customers

10:33

moving money in the other direction, they will replenish

10:36

the supply of cash from where you collected it

10:38

at one of the networks to facto offices around

10:40

the world.

10:41

The most basic often comes in the

10:43

form of a little shop grocery

10:47

stores that opens late and so very

10:49

expensive apples, and then everybody goes.

10:51

But how is it possible that it is still open where.

10:59

There's a lot of that.

11:00

Before I'd heard about this, I'd assumed that modern

11:03

money laundering was high tech, using

11:05

things like cryptocurrencies or complex

11:07

financial instruments. Actually really

11:09

surprised to learn that it's pretty old school.

11:12

Quentin says that this modern shadow banking

11:15

system, it's similar to the principles of

11:17

hawala networks that were used by Eastern

11:19

traders from the fourteenth century.

11:21

So the Hawala system is basically

11:23

a very ancient system that consisting is

11:26

based on trust and it's

11:29

based on a network of Hawala

11:31

dhas before running this kind of

11:33

informal network. It was used

11:36

a long time ago, even in the Middle Aged when you were

11:38

traveling, you didn't want to, you know, wander

11:40

around the roads with golden use. So what you

11:42

would do you would make a deposits

11:45

in the merchant who has an

11:47

agreement with his

11:50

suppliers. Let's say I don't know it's the Middle East,

11:52

and then when you would arrive there, you would choose a

11:54

note and somebody would give you an

11:56

equivalent amount of money based

11:59

on trust.

11:59

I'm also just interested in the capacity

12:02

of his systems because we're talking hundreds

12:04

of millions of not billions potentially of

12:08

money. The liquidity that deep

12:10

that you can move that

12:12

much money through this.

12:13

Start it's going to be a short term swer

12:15

it yes, wow, it

12:18

is.

12:20

So there are billions of dollars circulating

12:22

through these black market brokers, and

12:24

it's not just drug barons who are using them.

12:26

There are tax evaders, human traffickers,

12:29

warlords, terrorist groups, and

12:32

people moving money for sanctioned governments.

12:35

There's this strange thing in Europe and

12:37

it's that the number of physical banknotes

12:39

in circulation over the last decade, it's

12:42

actually gone up, but the number

12:44

of people paying for stuff with cash, it's

12:46

gone down. And central banks

12:49

they can have a pretty hard time knowing where

12:51

all of that physical cash has gone. In

12:54

the UK alone, the Bank of England,

12:56

it believes that there's about fifty billion pounds

12:58

in cash in circulation, but it

13:00

just can't be accounted for. No one

13:02

knows where it is. And

13:05

meanwhile, Quentin's seeing signs that the number

13:07

of money brokers is going on.

13:10

I've seen the commission drop.

13:13

It's not a good sign because

13:15

they're asking for less and less money. Zans

13:18

that there are more and more competitors and there is

13:20

more and more money out there.

13:23

Like Quentin said at the start, everybody

13:25

in the world a crime. They wake up for money.

13:27

And over in the United States, one lawyer

13:30

is starting to dig deeper into the Kinahan

13:32

money machine.

13:33

In the Middle East, Daniel

13:48

Kinahan is living in Dubai. They're

13:51

having a party in Dubai. They're getting

13:53

away with, you know, a lot of stuff. It

13:55

seems to be in Dubai and he

13:57

felt, I think untouchable.

13:59

Eric Montalvo is an attorney in Washington,

14:01

DC and before getting into law,

14:04

he served for twenty one years as an active duty

14:06

marine in the US military in the First

14:08

Golf War in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

14:11

When I transitioned into the civilian community,

14:14

I eventually started my firm in twenty eleven

14:16

and I practice national international

14:19

law.

14:21

And then one day in twenty twenty, Eric

14:23

got a call from a boxing promoter who was

14:25

furious one of the promoters

14:28

most successful fighters was leaving. He'd

14:30

switch to another promotion company, one

14:32

called MTK. It's

14:35

the company that Daniel Kinahan co founded

14:37

back in Spain, and by twenty twenty

14:39

one, MTK Global, like

14:41

Daniel, is based in Dubai. MTK

14:44

has become a major player in the boxing

14:47

world and this fighter he wants

14:49

to move over to them, but he's still under

14:51

contract, so there's a dispute,

14:53

and the current promoter asked Eric to take

14:55

on his case.

14:57

Before this, I was not really

14:59

a boxing litigator, if you will,

15:01

like the boxing profession was not something that

15:03

I was intimately familiar with in

15:06

terms of the business side. Right,

15:08

you know, I'm a fan and I would watch

15:10

a fight, you know what have you, But

15:13

I really had never got from a litigation

15:15

standpoint into the back end of what

15:17

was going on, so I really was in a learning

15:19

curve on this.

15:21

Eric's not studying the contracts, and MTK

15:24

looks just like any other multinational company.

15:27

On its face, it looked very legitimate

15:30

and very powerful compared to even

15:32

any US company. No one could

15:34

really compete with them, and they

15:36

had endorsements from high level boxing

15:39

professionals, right Bob aram

15:41

So my first review of them

15:44

was that they were a big professional

15:46

boxing corporation international

15:48

and that I just had to hold them accountable

15:51

for contract issues.

15:53

But then Eric comes across the name

15:55

Daniel Kinahan. At

15:57

the time, back in twenty twenty one, most

16:00

of the boxing world had embraced Kinahan

16:02

as a legitimate businessman, Eric's

16:05

or something else.

16:06

When I focused in on him,

16:10

obviously, I'm a former prosecutor,

16:12

so you know that

16:15

got my eyebrows raised.

16:17

Now, there's a long history in boxing of people

16:19

with let's say, a colorful past,

16:22

and initially Eric thought that the rumors

16:24

around Daniel Kinahan would have no bearing

16:26

on the contractual dispute. But as Eric

16:28

started to look at MTK's business model,

16:31

it seemed strange. One

16:33

of the ways that the company was able to recruit

16:35

so many fighters to its roster was by

16:37

offering them hugely favorable terms,

16:40

terms that seemed to defy financial

16:42

logic.

16:43

When I started trying to understand

16:46

the financials of

16:48

what was happening, nothing made

16:50

sense. No business can

16:53

spend the amount of money in litigation,

16:57

you know, fighter bonuses, all of these

16:59

things when

17:01

that money is not coming from fights.

17:04

For example, you could have a situation where

17:06

a boxer makes, say five hundred thousand

17:08

dollars in a fire, but the boxing company

17:10

promoting them pays them seven hundred

17:12

thousand dollars.

17:14

Where's that money coming from.

17:16

Daniel Kinahan had officially parted

17:18

ways with MTK back in twenty seventeen.

17:21

His links to organized crime had made it difficult

17:23

to be the public face of the company.

17:25

Everyone's paying attention to you, probably

17:28

for a good reason, so you know, take a

17:30

back seat and you're no longer part of MTK.

17:33

The problem is is that mister Kinahan wasn't

17:35

able to do that. He either

17:37

loved the boxing game, loved

17:39

the limelight whatever it was,

17:41

but he could not help himself, and so he

17:44

was publicly coming out over and over

17:47

again and participating in the fighting

17:50

arena.

17:51

And as Eric digs deeper into MTK's

17:53

finances, he discovers that the company

17:55

seems to have found an innovative way of moving

17:57

money around the globe.

17:59

It became clear to me as a prosecutor that

18:02

what they were doing is they were using

18:05

the fighters as a way

18:07

to move money through the system. And

18:11

so preliminarily, what I see

18:13

is that let's say they put a million

18:15

dollars in the fighter's account that wasn't for

18:17

the fighter to keep. What

18:20

it was was they would then take that money

18:22

out a month or two later, and

18:26

then it would go to a property

18:28

or go to some other

18:30

venture from the fighter's account.

18:33

And these were typically new accounts,

18:35

so the fighter would set up a new account, there

18:37

would be a very significant amount

18:39

of money coming in to the account,

18:42

and then that money would leave shortly thereafter,

18:45

and you go to pay

18:47

for some other thing that's unrelated

18:49

to the fighter or anything

18:52

else. So that is

18:55

money laundering.

18:56

Let's stop here for a moment, because

18:59

what Eric claims is happening using

19:01

boxing to launder money. It's

19:03

a pretty serious allegation. Up

19:07

until now, most people have seen Daniel

19:09

Kinahan's rise in boxing as an attempt to

19:11

clean up his reputation. But

19:14

maybe, if Eric's right, it

19:16

was more than that. The

19:18

boxing and the crime, they

19:20

weren't two different worlds, they were

19:22

part of the same thing. Eric's

19:26

next move is to file a legal case in California

19:28

for his client. It says MTK

19:31

is quote overseen by mister Daniel

19:33

Kinahan, and that Kinnahan started

19:36

MTK to quote laun the ill

19:38

gotten gains from drug trafficking. It

19:41

was part of a civil claim seeking compensation

19:43

from MTK. MTK

19:45

responds it strongly denies

19:47

what it called wild allegations,

19:49

and it says MTK Global

19:52

is not a front for a European drug cartel,

19:55

does not engage in money laundering, and

19:57

does not make money from the sale of illicit

20:00

drugs. It also denied

20:02

having any ongoing ties to Daniel Kinahan.

20:05

We should also be clear that there's no suggestion

20:08

that the boxers associated with MTK

20:10

were involved in any criminal activity. At

20:14

the time Eric's theory, it

20:16

wasn't a popular one.

20:19

Most of the people that were around

20:21

me that knew what I was doing thought I

20:23

was a little bit of a crackpot, right like

20:25

you know, what are you talking about.

20:27

Like, first of all, MTK's legitimate, you

20:30

know organization. I mean, people were saying

20:32

as Bob Aaron was saying it, the California Commissioner

20:34

was saying it. Everybody was like, you

20:36

know, this Montavo guy is crazy

20:39

and all of the stuff.

20:40

You're going up in this instance

20:42

against people who

20:45

at.

20:45

The time.

20:47

Are seen as extremely

20:49

dangerous, you know, like some of the most

20:51

dangerous criminals in the whole world, people

20:54

who are linked to multiple,

20:56

multiple homicides. And I was just wondering

20:59

what you were sort of thinking at the time about

21:01

that part of it.

21:02

I mean, in terms of my own personal safety

21:05

or.

21:05

In terms of your own personal safety.

21:07

Maybe I'm not, you

21:10

know, the most normal

21:12

person in the world, but I mean, you know, I went

21:15

to war at twenty right,

21:17

I'm not gonna not do what I have

21:19

to do because I'm afraid that's somehow

21:22

shape or form, someone's gonna

21:24

want me dead because I'm complaining

21:26

about what they're doing.

21:27

You know.

21:27

I just if that's the case, I shouldn't be an

21:29

attorney right.

21:31

To start the US legal case against Kinahan. They're

21:33

going to have to find him so they can serve him

21:35

the papers and finding a man

21:37

who's been busy evading law enforcement agencies

21:40

for years. It might sound a bit tricky, but

21:42

Eric had a plan.

21:44

When you're trying to be a legitimate businessman,

21:46

you have to register your business,

21:49

and so in Dubai it's no different

21:52

right they expect you to file the proper

21:54

documents, et cetera. So once

21:57

I saw he was in Dubai,

21:59

I focused my efforts there. And

22:02

if you look at Palm Islands, right,

22:05

there's two of them.

22:06

They're two man made islands jutting out from

22:08

the coast of both engineered

22:10

in the shape of palm trees so that each luxury

22:13

property has its own waterfront.

22:15

And if you have the amount of money that you know

22:18

mister Kinahan has access

22:20

to, and you know the pictures

22:22

and everything else you see, it

22:24

made sense that he was likely

22:27

living on one of those islands.

22:30

So Eric he'd figured out where Daniel Kinahan

22:33

was living in Dubai, and he'd hired

22:35

someone to go and deliver the US court papers

22:37

to his address. Now, the next

22:39

question was how would Daniel

22:41

respond. So

23:00

Daniel's figuring out how to deal with this

23:02

legal case against him, and at the same

23:05

time there are now signs that Dubai,

23:07

once a paradise for your criminals,

23:10

has begun to crack down. The

23:12

first members of the supercartel are

23:14

starting to fall. Ridu Antargi

23:17

one of the guests at Daniel Kinahan's wedding and

23:19

a notorious Dutch cocaine boss.

23:22

He's arrested in Dubai and charged with

23:24

multiple murders, and the Emirate agrees

23:26

to send him back to the Netherlands to face trial.

23:29

Another wedding guest, the Chilean traffick

23:32

are known as El Rico. He's arrested

23:34

in Latin America and extracited to the Netherlands.

23:36

Two Daniel Kinahan's

23:39

still safe in Dubai, but the pressure

23:41

back in Ireland is starting to build. There's

23:44

outrage in the Irish Parliament. The day after

23:46

Tyson Fury posts about Kinahan arranging

23:48

the Joshua fight. Leova redcar

23:51

Ireland's TISUK, the Prime Minister. He

23:53

says he's taken aback by Kinahan's

23:55

involvement, citing his checkered past.

23:58

He asks Iland's Foreign ministry to talk to

24:00

the UAE government about it urgently. Days

24:03

later, the Prince of Barren dumps Kinahan

24:05

as an advisor, and Bob Aarum announces

24:08

that he's going to have or Tyson furious negotiations

24:10

from now on, not Daniel Kinahan.

24:14

Daniel's now on the back foot, and he makes a

24:16

kind of surprising decision. He

24:18

launches a public relations campaign

24:21

to save his reputation as a legitimate businessman.

24:24

A bizarre film appears on the Internet

24:26

called The Regency Discover

24:28

the Truth.

24:30

And this isn't some.

24:31

Cobbled together home video. It's

24:33

a professional project. It's a dramatic

24:36

reenactment of the assassination attempt

24:38

against Daniel in twenty sixteen in Dublin.

24:40

It features a handsome actor playing him,

24:43

who's portrayed as the victim in the whole

24:45

thing.

24:47

When Daniel Kinahan arrived at the Wayne.

24:49

For Clash of the Clans, the first

24:51

thing that he noticed was that there were no Gada

24:54

to police the event. This

24:56

was unnerving because Daniel was

24:59

used to having his every move shadowed

25:01

by police.

25:02

Not only that, it's unlikely the film

25:04

convinced anyone, but it showed that Daniel

25:07

Kinahan was starting to get nervous.

25:11

Back in Dublin, John O'Driscoll, the

25:13

man in charge of Island's response to the Kinahan's

25:16

wave of violence. He's been watching Daniels

25:18

rise in boxing with frustration.

25:21

The sport of boxing which

25:23

is very important, and I knew

25:25

it to be so, having policed in

25:27

inner city communities for many years, many

25:30

kids were diverted from

25:32

crime through an involvement

25:34

in the sport of boxing, and

25:36

here we saw the Kinahan organization

25:39

potentially destroying that sport.

25:42

They were corrupting the sport and

25:45

that was operating at a global level.

25:47

John's been trying to come up with a plan, a

25:50

plan to take the Kinahans down. But

25:52

even if they build a bulletproof case,

25:55

there's another problem. The Kinahans

25:57

are in Dubai, and Dubai has

26:00

no formal extradition agreement with Ireland.

26:03

John he realizes something.

26:06

That no one entity, no one

26:08

law enforcement entity, could ever

26:11

achieve any realistic success

26:13

on its own entackling one

26:15

of these criminal enterprises.

26:19

So John starts flying around the world, meeting

26:21

with other law enforcement agencies, sharing

26:23

information, discussing strategies.

26:26

He knows that back in twenty ten, police

26:28

across Europe tried to stop the kiinner Hans

26:30

with Operation Shovel, but the case had

26:32

fallen apart, and John

26:35

He's determined that will never happen again. He

26:37

needs a silver bullet. Then

26:41

one morning he's talking to a US official

26:43

when they mentioned something that John just hadn't

26:46

thought about before. Something

26:48

the US government has used to go after people

26:50

in countries like Russia, Iran, and

26:53

North Korea, countries in which

26:55

Western governments can't just go in and arrest

26:57

people places like Dubai. What

27:01

if the official asked John, they

27:03

put the Kiinner Hands under economic

27:05

sanctions the Irish

27:07

police, they may not be able to get close to the kin

27:09

Hands in Dubai if the US

27:11

Treasury put them under sanctions, that

27:14

would cut them off from their money, the motive

27:16

for being in crime in the first place.

27:19

From that day, it was part

27:21

of our objective that we would

27:24

acquire sufficient information

27:27

to provide to the US Department

27:29

of Treasury to encourage

27:31

it to take on the Kinnahans

27:34

as a target, for them to

27:36

be placed under a list of priorities.

27:39

It was just an idea, but it was a radical

27:41

one, a new tool to target

27:43

individuals connected to European organized

27:46

crime. John immediately gets to

27:48

work. He needs to bring in as many

27:50

international partners into the operation as

27:52

possible, but to convince the US

27:54

Treasury to take action, the joint operation

27:57

needs watertight evidence that the Kinnahans

27:59

have evolved into a global threat.

28:02

Throughout the process, I would have been privy

28:04

to the intelligence that we had

28:06

gathered ourselves in Ireland,

28:09

and then other jurisdictions

28:11

had gathered additional information, and

28:14

bit by bit dijigsaw was being put together

28:17

in terms of establishing

28:20

how significant in fact the Kenahans were

28:22

on the global stage.

28:24

Months and months passed, with countless

28:26

meetings between law enforcement agencies from

28:28

different countries sharing the intelligence they've

28:30

gathered on the Kinnahans, and

28:33

then the US side of the joint operation

28:35

they discovered something pretty big. At

28:37

the time, it was a closely guarded piece of

28:40

highly sensitive information. John

28:42

tells me it was something about how the Kinahans

28:45

and other members of the Dubai supercartel had

28:47

been laundering their money, about the money

28:49

brokers that we heard about earlier in the episode.

28:52

As time emerged and as

28:54

the eyes of US

28:57

law enforcement more generally were focused

28:59

on the Kenhen's, it

29:02

was realized that the money

29:04

laundering associated with that drugs empire

29:07

involved the Kenahan's utilize

29:10

organizations that may potentially

29:12

have links to international terrorism.

29:15

As we're talking, as John's telling me this,

29:18

I want to know what he means which

29:20

international terrorists? Is it a group,

29:23

is it a government? But when

29:25

you say terrorist related to activity, does that relate

29:27

to any particular countries. John

29:30

doesn't really answer this, so I ask him directly

29:33

the thing I'm thinking, the thing you might be

29:35

thinking too. Is he talking about

29:37

Iran.

29:38

Well, that would be a conclusion

29:42

that would be reached primarily

29:44

by the US authorities haven't been satisfied

29:47

having received initially

29:49

information from the Irish law enforcement,

29:52

UK law enforcement, and

29:55

they then pursuing

29:57

that line of inquiry, would

30:00

then have concluded

30:02

that, in fact, there is potential

30:05

that there is a financing

30:08

of activity that can could be associations

30:10

with the Iranian station.

30:14

John's saying it in a guarded way, but

30:16

here's what it sounds like to me. It's

30:18

the money, the money laundering,

30:21

that's the connection between the Kinahans,

30:23

the supercartel and Iran. An

30:27

Udi Levy, the former head of the Mossad's

30:29

Economic warfare unit, He says the same

30:32

thing. He tells me that Iran's

30:34

money laundering channels are regularly used

30:36

by criminal networks across the world as

30:38

well as other sanctioned governments.

30:40

The sanction caused the Iranian to

30:42

be very creative to

30:44

find I think today the number one

30:47

in the world out of circlements the sanction

30:49

how to build very

30:53

very smart way

30:56

to laundering money. They

30:59

are giving a suggestion to

31:01

the Irusian and other countries and the North

31:03

Korean out to circlements the sanction,

31:05

they became so expert they.

31:08

Know very well how to do it.

31:10

And as we know, it's not just sanctioned

31:12

regimes that need to find secret ways of moving

31:14

money around the world.

31:16

No, the direct trafficking

31:19

need the ideas and

31:22

their way out to

31:24

build infrastructure that nobody

31:27

identify. So and they run

31:29

and have today, I think

31:31

the best infrastructure in the world to

31:33

transfer money from one point to the other

31:36

and that nobody will have identified. So

31:39

not only that they are using the direct

31:41

trafficking, but they even making

31:44

the world, let's say more

31:46

bad by allowed

31:50

the cartels and the direct

31:52

trafficker to use their infrastructure

31:55

to transfer money.

31:57

I really haven't come across any evidence that

31:59

the members of the Supercartel are connected

32:02

to Iran for ideological reasons.

32:04

It's likely it was just business,

32:07

the money laundering. It was a service,

32:09

one that worked, but having access

32:12

to new and sophisticated ways to move

32:14

money, it made the rise of stateless

32:16

drug traffickers like the Supercartel possible.

32:20

And this connection could it be the thing

32:22

that explains how the supercartel got

32:25

involved in the assassination of Alimatamed

32:29

Udi says the Alimatomed assassination

32:31

it fits with a pattern he's seen of

32:33

Iran using organized criminals

32:35

to target their enemies abroad.

32:38

I think Iran is not alone. I think today

32:40

is a new trend by some

32:43

let's say intelligence forces, that

32:46

it's easier, sometimes

32:49

cheaper to use drag

32:51

dealers and criminals to

32:53

make assassination because

32:56

if they call, you

32:59

cannot blame Iran, you

33:01

can blame drug trafficking. It's something that related

33:03

to drug trafficking. They

33:05

are preferred to go to criminal

33:07

and to drug dealers, to

33:10

pay them money, to give them

33:12

guidance and to send

33:14

them to the mission.

33:16

But I still have a big question. Is

33:18

it possible to find out who in Iran

33:21

worked with the supercarteil to assassinate Alimtomed

33:24

to solve this murder?

33:26

Yes, but it will be a little bit difficult because

33:28

they're not stupid. In most of the cases,

33:31

they're putting a buffer between

33:33

themselves and the

33:37

last end. Let's say something like that.

33:40

Let's say the Iranian from Good Sports Agent

33:43

well will approach to someone that

33:46

it will approach to somebody else, and

33:48

then it will approach to the third party

33:51

and will give him the mission.

33:53

To find someone buried deep in a shadowy,

33:56

hidden world where espionage and organized

33:58

crime me it seems impossible,

34:01

And then I came across a case a top

34:03

Iranian spy arrested in Europe,

34:06

found with a red notebook full of

34:08

secrets, and perhaps inside

34:10

that notebook we can find the answer.

34:13

That's next time on our season finale

34:16

of Hot Money.

34:31

Hot Money is a production of The Financial

34:33

Times and Pushkin Industries. It

34:35

was written and reported by me Miles Johnson,

34:38

and if you've got any leads or information about this story,

34:40

you can email me at New narcosat

34:42

FT dot com. The series

34:45

producer is Peggy Sutton. Edith

34:47

Russello is the associate producer. Fact

34:49

checking is by Arthur Gompertz, Engineering

34:52

by Sarah Bruguerer, sound

34:55

design from Jake Gorsky, Jeremy

34:57

Warmsley wrote the original music. Our

34:59

editor is Sarah Nix, and the executive

35:02

producers are Jacob Goldstein and Cheryl

35:04

Brumley. Special thanks to Laura

35:06

Clark, Alistair Mackie and Breen Turner

35:10

do