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link in the show notes. Previously on Hot Money, the pressure on Daniel Kinahan is rising. His partners in the Dubai supercartel are starting to fall, and police around the world are working on a secret plan to take him down for good. It's the morning of April twelfth, twenty twenty two, and reporters and crews arrive at a press
conference in Dublin that's been called by the Irish Police. Officially, there'll be an update on how law enforcement agencies are working together to collaborate against international organized crime, but it's a bit vague, perhaps suspiciously vague, and journalists they're starting to speculate about what this press conference is really about. Behind the scenes. John O'Driscoll is getting nervous. John's assistant
Commissioner in charge of Serious organized crime. Ever since his meeting with US officials three years before, he's been working on a single objective. And the press conference this morning in Dublin it's going to be the moment he finally gets to announce it to the world. But John knows that if work gets out, it could all fall apart.
He's chosen the venue carefully.
I said that, beyond any doubt, it was not going to take place in those rooms that we may have had press conferences relate to the ken Hens previously.
Instead, it would take place in Dublin City Hall. It's the right sort of setting for a historic announcement. Marble flows, huge classical pillars and statues on ancient Roman style plints.
The holding of the event in City Hall was important, first of all because it is that one for building that it is, but also it is situated in south inner city Dublin, which is where the Kenhn organization emerged from.
Quietly, senior officials from various foreign police forces have been flying into Dublin. People from the US Treasury, DA and Customs and Border protection officials from Europole and the UK's National Crime Agency, including Deputy Director of Investigations Matt Horn.
We derived the day before from the UK and had been extremely well looked after by the GUARDA from the airport, and you know they were keeping a very close eye on ask to make sure that all the all of us representatives of the international law enforcement community were sort well looks after and well protected.
And despite all these high profile police officers arriving in Dublin at exactly the same time, John's been able to keep things under wraps. Everyone's now seated, The whole falls quiet in anticipation, and John walks out onto the stage. Within minutes, the kinner Hands will become some of the most wanted men on the planet. I'm Miles Johnson and from the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. This is hot
money The New Narcos, Episode eight, The Red Notebook. Back when I started at the FT as a trainee reporter fifteen years ago, I never expected I'd end up writing about organized crime. We covered things like the stock market and mergers and acquisitions. There was this very clear boundary back then between the world. We wrote about the world of business, CEOs and politicians and the underworld, but something's
changed since then. The line between criminal activity and state backed enterprise, between big business and gangsters has become fuzzier. We live in a time where some heads of state increasingly act like crime bosses, and the crime bosses they act like the heads of multinational companies. It could be a world leader investing billions into startups and tech companies, but at the same time ordering the murder of dissidents abroad.
It could be North Korean state hackers stealing bitcoins to fun missile programs, or Emmeinin backed tycoons using mercenary armies to mine for gold in Africa. Or it could be a cocaine cartel hiding out in Dubai while carrying out contract killings in Europe for a sanctioned regime. It's all part of the rise of a new type of criminal boss, one backed by authoritarian governments. I called them state backed gangsters, and they're thriving at a time when the world is
becoming more fragmented and more chaotic. Reporting on the Dubai supercartel, I've discovered that European drug traffickers have been taking advantage of the same money laundering channels that Iran uses to evade Western sanctions. That seems to be the reason why international criminals have become unlikely bedfellows with a theocratic regime. That press conference that John's arranged, he knows it could
be the beginning of the end for the supercartel. But before we get to that, I want to take a little detour because there's an important question from the start of this series that we still don't have an answer to. The murder Broker was convicted for arranging the assassination of Alimtamed, the electrician who was on the runt from Iran, but no one has ever been able to find out who in Iran gave the murder broker his orders. And enjoying the reporting of this series, I came across something that
might help us get one step closer. It was a case that revealed a ton of new information about the way that Iran secretly pursues its enemies in Europe, people like Alim Tamed. And there's someone I want to talk to because he was directly involved in that case, someone who has first hand experience of the long history of violence against enemies of the Iranian regime wherever they are in the world. Husseyin Aberdini was born in Iran, but
he now lives in London. He's in his late fifties and he's quietly spoken that he's been fighting for most of his life.
I have been with the resistance over three decades now, nearly four decades.
In the spring of nineteen ninety, Hussein was a young activist and he was in Turkey. He says he traveled there to try and stop the deportation of Iranian refugees who'd crossed the border illegally. One day in Istanbul, he's in a car with two colleagues. They're on the motorway when suddenly something blocks the road ahead.
The traffic slows down. Hussein's up front, sitting next to the driver, and all.
Of a sudden we heard, you know, the sound of bullets. They riddled our car from the bag.
Hussein barely has time to take in that someone is shooting at them when a car smashes into the front of their vehicle.
They can't drive away and.
Another car pinned us from behind. It was then which I realized, you know, this was this was an assassination or kidnapping.
A man jumps out of the vehicle in front, the one that's just plowed into their car.
He's holding a revolver.
And it was only I think a couple of meters before he reached our car. I tried to do something. There was a briefcase belonging to my female colleague and sitting the back of the car, so I just took dad, opened the door and went to stop him.
He's clutching the briefcase like a shield as the man starts shooting.
First bullet hit my chest and I didn't know how many bullets, you know, I received then, and I just fell down, fell down in the street.
Saint's lying on the ground, bleeding, and he can see the man walk up to him. He's preparing to take a final shot, but nothing happens.
The bullet jammed and the muzzle of the gun.
That's a Saint's first lucky break. The traffic starts to move again, and the assassin take off. Hussein desperately needs to get to the hospital, but the car he was in is smashed up, and everyone else on the motorway they seemed to be trying to run away as quickly as they can.
I remember very vaguely that my colleague threw herself, you know, in front of one of the cars, and there was a taxi which has stopped and I was put at the back of the taxi and I just got unconscious. The hospital was only three minutes away. If it was further than that, I wouldn't make it.
Hussein fell into a coma. It would be fifty days before he woke up. He was told that one bullet had passed very close to his heart and another had destroyed his liver. But even at the hospital he's not safe. The killers they come back, and this time they're posing as his friends.
But my true friends arrived and they were told, you know that there are other people who wanted to come and see me. And then those people escaped from the scene when they realized, you know, there were people, my true friends, you know, we're there.
That's the same second stroke of luck, and there'll be a third one as well. When the killers call up, pretending to be the police, they tell the hospital staff that they know Hussein is now conscious and they want to interview him about what happened.
But the president of Turkey in those days was Tolgodozol and his mother, you know, was in the same hospital. The president wanted to come and visit his mother, and they sailed off the whole area hospital and they realized there was another branch of police who wanted to come and see me, and they found out there was a Bogos call. It was the Ranian regime who wanted to get rid of me because they didn't want me to speak. That was very pure luck.
That was more than thirty years ago. Hussein tells me he's still affected every day by the damaged onto his liver in that attack. He's one of the rare survivors of an assassination attempt by the Iranian regime. Several of his friends and colleagues have been murdered since then. Today, Hussain is a senior member of Iran's main foreign opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran or the NCRI.
SO the main objective of the National Council of Resistance of Iran is to establish a democratic and the secular government in Iran. Its main principle, of course, has been against any dictatorship, whether there's the formula dictatorship of the Shah or the present medieval dictatorship of the Mullahs.
The NCRI, it's an umbrella organization, and one of the largest groups within it is called the People's Mojahdeen Organization of Iran, known by its Farsi initials me e K now the MEK, it hasn't always had the West's approval. It was implicated in several terrorist attacks against Iran, including the nineteen eighty one bombing that Tehran claimed was carried out by Ali matamed the Quiet Electrician.
In the Netherlands.
From nineteen ninety seven to twenty twelve, the mk was designated as a terror organization by the US government, But over the past decade it's refashioned itself and now it's a pretty influential opposition voice on Iran. But for all its acceptance by Western powers, the NCRI remains a top target of the Iranian regime. In June twenty eighteen, Hussain and his colleagues are in Paris. They're holding a huge meeting, a rally called the Free Iran World Summit.
Tens of thousands of Iranians with many non Iranian supporters of the resistance who came from sixty seven different countries throughout the ward.
Dozens of foreign politicians are invited as well, and everyone convenes in a vast conference center. It's only afterwards the Hussain finds out what very nearly happened.
I think it was on the first of July. The next day that was told by a friend that the Belgian Featheral police, you know, they had arrested two Iranians who are trying, you know, to bring a bomb.
Belgian police had arrested two Iranians who were on their way to the Paris conference center with a bomb. It's another lucky escape for Hussein and hundreds of other people. And as police investigate the failed bomb plot, they're going to discover something that I believe could shed new light on the murder of Alimtomed. It's the most important discovery in decades about how Iran targets its enemies abroad. And this time the clues aren't just glimpses, hints or encryptied messages.
They're in a battered, red notebook filled with handwritten notes, sitting in the back of a car. So Hussein and his colleagues they discover that someone had tried to plant a bomb at the rally in Paris, and at the same time, police in Germany arrest an Iranian man on a highway in Bavaria. His name is Assa Dolla Asadi and officially he's the third councilor of the Iranian Embassy in Vienna. He arrived in Europe in twenty fourteen, but in reality he's a top spy for Iran's Ministry of
Intelligence and Security. It's Iran's equivalent of the CIA or MI six. Assadi is running a network of agents across Europe, meeting them in cafes in small medieval towns and handing over secret instructions or bundles of cash. And months before the Paris rally, he traveled to Tehran, returning to Europe with a sophisticated bomb hidden in his diplomatic luggage. The bombs made from an explosive known as Tatp or Mother of Satan, extremely volatile. Asardi carries it on too Luxembourg
and hands it over to his agents. In this part of the story, it's a bit less like a Lacarian novel because the venue he chooses it's a pizza hut. He gives them the bomb with instructions for planting it at the Paris rally, and the code word he uses is PlayStation. But what Asardi doesn't know is that European intelligence agencies have been watching his every move and know exactly what he's been planning. They even disabled the airport security scanner so he could get through. The two agents
are arrested as they travel from Brussels to Paris. Assardi is pulled over by the police on a motorway in Germany, and in the back of his car they find a battered, red notebook filled with handwritten notes, notes that reveal that Asardi was involved in way more than one bomb plot. Assadi has listed hundreds of different meetings with agents across Europe. He's itemized cash payments he's made to spies, and he's listed more than two hundred places he's visited as part
of his work in eleven different countries. Because as Sardi, according to the findings of a Belgian criminal court, is part of a secret unit of Iranian foreign intelligence, a sort of murder squad in Europe. It's called Department three one two and its role is to kill opponents of the regime abroad. There's not much public information about Department three one two, but what we do know it's pretty terrifying.
It's thought to be a top secret unit that specializes in spying on human rights activists, journalists and others who the Iranian regime believed to be a threat, but was Ali Mtummed one of their targets. We know that Assardi arrived in his new job in June twenty fourteen, a little over a year before Alie Mtummd was killed outside his house in ol Mayor. It was the first successful targeted assassination carried out by Iran in Western Europe in
over twenty three years. And then two years later, in twenty seventeen, while Assardi was still free, another Iranian opposition.
Member was gunned down in the Netherlands.
So we can say that Assadi arrives in Vienna in late twenty fourteen and then suddenly Iran is linked to several assassinations in Europe. This isn't conclusive evidence, but according to the Belgian criminal court documents targeting dissidents, that was Assadi's job, so it makes sense that he would at
least be a suspect in the Matamad murder. And we also know that Assadi he was reporting into really top people in Iran, including the Deputy Minister of Intelligence After his arrest for the bomb plot, Assardi's put on trial in Belgium and he gets prison visits from some of Iran's most senior spies and other officials from its foreign ministry.
They clearly cared a lot about this case. The criminal case against Assadi was brought by the Belgian government, but there were also twenty five five others who joined as private plaintiffs. They were all at the Paris rally, and Hussein was one of them, and it gave him access to all the prosecution's evidence. He sent me the files. This is hundreds of pages of documents in several European languages, and there's also extracts from Asardi's red notebook. And there's
something else, something that I think could be important. Assardi's job meant that he had to travel a lot on work trips across Europe to meet with his various agents. And it turns out that even spies used booking dot Com, the huge online travel agent, to book their hotels, or at least Assadi did, and the details of all those bookings they're in the files. So I'm sat here in the offices of the Financial Times looking.
At these records.
Every hotel Assadi stayed in over his four years operating in Europe. For some of the bookings he used his official Iranian Foreign Ministry email address. For others it was burner accounts from Yahoo and Gmail. I should have met his agents in some pretty low key locations, and he often seemed to book two hotels in different places for the same night, maybe thinking it would throw off anyone
who was following him. In the records, they do show that he traveled to the Netherlands on the sixth of September twenty sixteen, less than a year after Mtammad was murdered. He stayed at the Best Western in the Hague for one night. The next evening, Assadi booked two hotel rooms, one in the Dutch town of Meppel and another in swart Sluice, both really small towns. And in April twenty seventeen, Assardi booked a room at the Savoy Amsterdam for one
of his agents. So we know he was working in the Netherlands and around the same time that Ali Mctammad was murdered. It's far from a smoking gun, but it's enough enough for me to ask Kasain does he think that Asardi could have been connected to the murder of Mohammed Reza Kalahi, also known as Alimtammad. I lay out what we know, so he.
Arrives, Assadi arrives in Austria in twenty fourteen, and then in twenty fifteen, a man called Mohammed Reza Kolahi, who was living in a town and al Mayor, was shot and killed outside his house. The murder has never been solved. They know who shot him, they know who told those people to shoot him. The Dutch government then said we believe the Iranian regime was behind this murder, and they
expelled to diplomat. But there's never been any any further information about who could have coordinated a plot like that. Do you think it's reasonable to assume that Asadi could have been behind something like that.
Well, I don't have a precise information about this case, but it I think makes sense to believe that. Of course, I mean, then Asadi was the you know, the head of this intelligence section in mainly the Western Europe. I think that is this could very well be I mean I said, it could very well be behind that.
So it's reasonable to assume, you know, we have a spy working under diplomatic cover who is in charge of all of Western Europe, and his focus is effectively organizing assassination attempts against opposition figures. So it's a reasonable assumption to think that of the assassinations or attempted assassinations that occurred in Western Europe after twenty fourteen, he presumably would have had to have some.
He's had a hand in his hand in it.
Absolutely what he say says.
Of course, it doesn't prove anything, but at the very least Assadi has to be considered a suspect. There's this new wave of assassinations in Europe, all connected to the Iranian state, and they begin after Assards posted to Vienna in twenty fourteen, and the first is the murder of an electrician in a small Dutch town. A year later, Assadi is convicted for the attempted bombing in Paris and he's sentenced to twenty years for attempted murder and plotting
a terrorist attack. Iran denies any involvement, but will never know if he was involved in Ali Mahommed's death because after Asadi is convicted, a Belgian aid worker is arrested in Iran on these trumped up charges of espionage and sentenced to forty years in prison and seventy four lashes. Then in May twenty twenty three, the Belgian government agrees to exchange Assadi for the aid worker, So Assardi he's now back in Iran and his notebook aside. He's taken
his secrets with him. It's the twelfth of April twenty twenty and we're back in Dublin City Hall. The entire time, John O'Driscoll has been working on a plan to sanction the Kinahans. He's been worried about it leaking because he knows if the news gets out, they'll quickly be able to hide their assets before they're frozen.
Today's a landmark day.
But now the Kinahans have run out of.
Time and in particular against the Kenahan organized crime gang.
John's boss, Drew Harris, Commissioner of the Irish Police, steps up to the podium.
This organized crime gang started life as a sopha inner city Dublin drug dealers, but has grown over the decades to become a transnational crime cartel that is estimated to have generated over one billion euro for them.
Then a senior official from the US Treasury announces the news that will make headlines around the world.
So, as of today, the Kinahan transnational criminal Organization joins the ranks of Italy's Camorra, Mexico's Los Zetas, Japan's Yakuza, in Russia's Thieves in Law. Also, as of today, the result of of these sanctions, these individuals are immediately served from the US financial system and in the assets brought property under US jurisdiction are immediate blocked.
At this moment, we have to stop here for a minute just to take this all in. It's utterly remarkable. A criminal family that began in a Dublin flat in the nineteen eighties is now being compared to the Yakuza and Camorra crime groups whose origins date back hundreds of years.
They've been sanctioned by the US government, one of a handful of organized crime groups to ever face that kind of penalty, and the US also puts a five million dollar bounty on the heads of Christy Daniel and his brother Christopher Jr. Calling their organization a threat to the entire Lizard economy through its role in international money laundering.
Detective Chief Superintendent Seamus Poland he knows that the US sanctions will destroy the in a hands chance of continuing their life of luxury in Dubai.
Because the dangers with sanctions is that if any legitimate business engages with somebody who's on a sanctions list, they're actually the people who are committing the criminal offenses, and they risk all their assets being seized and they risk being prosecuted. So, you know, avenues to live the high life that you would have had before are closed down very very quickly. You know, people end up with so much money from cocaine trafficking. Behind all this, it's all
about greed. You have money to try and live in your big house, drive your fancy car, fly business class all across the world, stay in the best hotels. What the sanctions actually does is it removes a lot of the facilitation that would be possible for people to live their lives and to benefit from the illicit wealth that they've actually achieved.
Soon, the United Ara memorates freeze Daniel's assets too, and they empower their own sanctions on the Kinnahans in Dubai, removing one of the last places on Earth they can hide the Kinahans.
They go on the run.
Significant parties within the Kinahan organized crime group all went to ground and have been attempting to evade justice and hide in the shadows since that date. But from our own information and intelligence and conversations with other criminals as well, you know, I think this took to a different level because the criminal on the world in Europe didn't anticipate that sanctions was something that would happen on this side of the Atlantic.
But the strange thing is it's been more than a year since that big announcement in Dublin and the Kinnahans they're all still at large. It's not clear where they are. I've heard multiple rumors something that they're still in the UAE, living on the false identities. Others think that there's somewhere else in the Middle East laying low. Even had speculation that they're building connections with Putin's Russia. So I asked Seamus, why haven't the police been able to bring them in yet.
Well, investigations are still ongoing as well at the moment, so the sanctions was only one phase of a much wider investigation that that's continuously ongoing and taking place. And as was announced in April twenty twenty two at the designation as well. You know, extradition warrants were in place for one of the principles who's sought for charges in relation to murder and directing organized crime, and that's still
outstanding as well. But you can rest assured that that investigations are continuing actively across many different jurisdictions.
For a few.
Years, the men one who gathered at Daniel Kinahan's wedding in twenty seventeen seemed almost invincible. They created a new model, stateless gangsters, using modern technology to run global mafias in ways that were impossible a few decades before. But eventually their reputation caught up with them. They made the mistake of becoming too public, too brazen. I began reporting on this story because I think it tells us something important about how the world is changing and the global shifts
that made the Dubai Supercartel possible. They're only accelerating the criminals of the future. I think they're going to be more global, more sophisticated, and more dangerous, and I think it's going to get harder to tell if someone's a gangster, a businessman, or both. The story of the Supercartel for me It's an ominous sign of these new hybrid threats that democracies face and of government's weakening ability to fight them.
The sanctions against the Kinnahans, they've been hailed as a victory, a landmark in coordinated action by Western governments to take down a major crime group. But there's something I've kept asking myself. With the sanctions a show of strength or really just a sign of weakness. Some of the world's most powerful governments have teamed up to go after the Kinnahans,
but a year later, they're still out there. So the Dubai supercartel may be finished, but its model will live on, and perhaps something new and maybe worse, will take its place. In fact, somewhere out there, it probably already has.
Not.
Long before the sanctions were announced, Rafael Imperiale, the Van Goff boss, was arrested in Dubai and sent to Italy. He since agreed to become a state's witness, and in November twenty twenty three, he told Hallian prosecutors he would sell off his eighty million dollar private island in Dubai
in the hope of his sentence being reduced. MTK, the boxing company that Daniel Kinahan co founded It closes and back in the Netherlands where we began our story, Paul Urks, the crime reporter, has been able to come out of police protection and return to his normal life.
We want dur life back in full, so not riding an armored gah, but riding the bike and sitting down.
A terrace uleas a Eliam, the local councilor and our mayor who campaigned about the Alimtamid murder. Well, he's now a national politician. In twenty twenty one, he was elected to the Dutch Parliament.
Look, you know, I was like this baby when I got here. My father had like twenty dollars in his pocket. But the honor of representing the Dutch people's it's massive for me. My goal in life is defending democracy, defending freedom, and that relates to the story of my dad and also this story. Look how dangerous the world around us can be.
In the Kinahans, they have to live every day knowing they're being hunted by police.
For MIKEE.
Oysullivan, the man who first arrested Christy Kinahan in a Dublin flat back in the nineteen eighties, it's only a matter of time you.
Feel like saying to them, did you not think this stay had come? By doing what you're doing? Better people than them have been got and they have made themselves a global target. And with the DEA on your case, the world is a small place and it gets smaller.
Pot Money is a production of The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It was written and reports by me Miles Johnson, and if you've got any leads or information about this story, you can email me at New Narcos at FT dot com. The series producer is Peggy Sutton. Edith Russello is the associate producer. Fact Checking is by Arthur Gompertz, engineering by Sarah Bruguerer, sound design from Jake Gorski. Jeremy Warmsley wrote the original music. Our editor is Sarah Nix and the
executive producers are Jacob Goldstein and Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks to Ruler Calaff, Laura Dubois, Peter Spiegel, Tofa Forehez, Manuela Saragoza, Breen Turner, John Schnaz, Jacob Wiseberg, Alistair Mackie, Laura Clark, Nigel Hansson, Paulo, Pascual, Minnie Advincoula, Dan Dombi, Tom Braithway, Ronda Taylor, Matt Vela, Alex Barker, Patricia Nilsen.
Matt Garahan, Madison
Marriage, Paul Murphy, rich Ward Arley Adlington, Marsha Wolraven, Jude Webber, Harry Brodie, Eric Sandler, Nicole op den Bosch, Christina Sullivan, Vicky Merrick, Jake Flanagan and Greta Cone