Narcos expert who placed US sanctions on notorious Kinahan trio reveals KEY strategy the State must implement immediately to stop Cartel rivals' plans to fill inevitable vacuum

By VALERIE HANLEY and JOHN DRENNAN Published: 22:54, 18 August 2026 | Updated: 22:54, 18 August 2026 The Government and gardaí must shut down ‘pipelines’ established by the Kinahan cartel that turned Ireland into ‘a transit point for drugs’, the former head of the US sanctions office has said. Greg Gatjanis also warned the Irish authorities must move quickly to ensure a rival crime gang is not allowed to ‘fill the void’ following the arrest and extradition of its alleged leader, Daniel Kinahan. He told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘If I was an Irish Government official… I would say, “okay, we arrested the leader of the day-to-day operations, and we extradited him, and we have [senior Kinahan lieutenant] Seán McGovern and [Kinahan money launderer] John Morrissey and others”. ‘My worry would be… it’s going to affect the pipelines of those drugs. How do we prevent anyone from stepping in and filling that? How do we stop?  Daniel, Christy Sr and Christy Jr Kinahan 'How do we fill that void and the vacuum? That would be the one focus I would definitely have if I was the Irish Government right now. What are we doing to close those pipelines down for good?’ The former Head of Global Targeting for Sanctions at the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said the Kinahan organisation grew from a relatively small player in the drugs trade to an international cartel on a par with to ‘Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Italy’s ’Ndrangheta and Camorra criminal organisations’, and the Japanese Yakuza mafia. He said: ‘A powerful criminal organisation no longer requires decades to grow and build. A powerful criminal organisation can rise to the apex of its power in probably three to five years, and it’s with such power that it could threaten other countries.  'It could threaten the stability of a single country. It could terrorise its own citizens, so a criminal organisation can rise to become a threat to an entire country within three to five years.’ The Kinahans’ rapid global expansion saw them set up new drug trafficking routes, sourcing cocaine and heroin from south American cartels, using Ireland as one of its ‘transit points’ into Europe. Greg Gatjanis has warned the Irish authorities must move quickly to ensure a rival crime gang is not allowed to ‘fill the void’ following the arrest and extradition of its alleged leader, Daniel Kinahan Mr Gatjanis imposed sanctions on the three Kinahans while at the US Treasury Department ‘What was happening is that the collusion between the Kinahan organisation, the Colombian and Mexican cartels, was actually turning Ireland into a transit point for drugs,’ Mr Gatjanis said. Preventing the rise of another Kinahan-scale cartel is a prime concern for gardaí. In an interview with the MoS in March, Detective Séamus Boland, the head of the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (GDOCB), warned that other major players are already emerging – and keeping these gangs from becoming a major threat is a ‘national priority’. He said of one gang, ‘The Family’, who have become the State’s biggest drug dealers: ‘We are pursuing them with the same methodology that we did in relation to the likes of the Kinahans.’ He also said gardaí have identified 22 ‘transnational’ gangs operating across the country with links to criminal networks in other jurisdictions. In response to queries, a Garda spokesman referred to Commissioner Justin Kelly’s comments in Galway last week, when he said of the organised crime threat: ‘Our work is certainly not finished on this. ‘There are other individuals that we are targeting that are involved in transnational organised crime.’ Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.