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A senior lieutenant of Ireland’s most wanted drug cartel boss was being extradited from the United Arab Emirates on Thursday in a major blow to the Kinahan organised crime group, which is under US sanctions.
Sean McGovern, 39, described by the US Treasury as the “adviser and closest confidant” of cartel leader Daniel Kinahan, was arrested in the UAE in October and is the first to be returned since the two nations signed a historic extradition treaty.
His arrival to face trial in Ireland will be seen as proof that the noose is closing on Kinahan, one of the world’s most notorious drug kingpins, who has long lived in luxury in Dubai safe from the fear of extradition.
“This is huge,” said Michael O’Sullivan, a former head of what is now the National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau of the Irish police, told the Financial Times.
“This will get him [Kinahan] more worried . . . put him under pressure,” he said. “They’ve been living in a bubble. The UAE is no longer a safe haven. This is an earthquake from a criminal perspective.”
An Irish military plane carrying McGovern took off on Wednesday night from Al Maktoum International Airport and was expected to land at a military air base south-west of Dublin later on Thursday after several stops.
On arrival McGovern will be arrested and is expected to be charged at Dublin’s Special Criminal Court. Interpol last year said he was wanted on charges including murder and directing an organised crime group.
Ireland’s police, An Garda Síochána, and the justice ministry declined to comment immediately on the extradition of a key figure in what the US has labelled a major transnational criminal organisation.
“He has always been seen as a test case for the bigger fish [in the Kinahan cartel],” said Nicola Tallant, investigations editor at the Sunday World newspaper and author of books on Ireland’s gangland. “McGovern is No 2 in the organisation, he’s Daniel Kinahan’s right-hand man, he’s been running the show for him . . . he’s like a deputy CEO.”
Sanctioning seven cartel members including McGovern in 2022 in a sweeping US action that also put a $5mn US bounty on each of Daniel Kinahan, his father and cartel patriarch Christy Kinahan, and his brother Christopher, the US Treasury said “evidence indicates that all dealings with Daniel Kinahan go through McGovern”.
It said he was a large-scale cocaine seller who managed Kinahan’s communications and was wanted for “materially assisting, sponsoring, or providing financial, material, or technological support” to his boss.
The UAE also froze the Kinahans’ assets in 2022. As yet, the Kinahans themselves do not face charges in Ireland but police are reported to have submitted a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions which must decide whether to pursue charges. Police and the DPP have declined to comment.
McGovern was described last year by then Interpol secretary-general Jürgen Stock as “one of Ireland’s most wanted individuals” whose capture “highlights that no fugitive can consider themselves safe from justice”.
The Dubliner, who cut his teeth as a teenage hoodlum in Dublin before climbing through the ranks of the cartel to become Kinahan’s go-to guy, was arrested 10 days before the extradition treaty was signed and had been fighting his removal.
Irish officials say he is wanted on suspicion of involvement in the murder of Noel Kirwan, an innocent man who was shot and killed in 2016 as a deadly feud between the Kinahans and rival Hutch gang raged in Dublin. Kirwan was a childhood friend of patriarch Gerry Hutch who last year narrowly lost a bid for election to Ireland’s parliament.
The UAE has already extradited other big name crime figures with links to the Kinahans — Italian Raffaele Imperiale and Ridouan Taghi — and McGovern’s return will turn up the heat on Daniel Kinahan.
But Tallant said the cartel boss would probably try to brazen it out.
“I think he stays put and just hopes he’s going to be able to pull strings,” she said. “He’s a little bit trapped. Where’s he going to go?”
