Cocaine Wars (31 page)

But in recent years, political pressure from abroad has led the Spaniards to tighten up their act and do more to prevent the drug barons from doing their business with virtual impunity. Since 2006, the Spanish authorities have increased the volume of correspondence through the European police agency, Europol, by nearly forty per cent, which is a sign that at least things are starting to get better. With the introduction of European arrest warrants, which are enforceable throughout the EU, non-accession countries such as Turkey and Latvia are now emerging as the countries of choice, but Spain is still very much a gangster's paradise. There are so many Irish criminals operating out of the country, creating so much work for Gardaí that a Detective Sergeant is permanently based in Madrid to act as a liaison between the two police forces.

In February 2008, Michael Colgan, the director of Customs and Excise Drug Enforcement Intelligence Unit, explained why Spain attracts drug dealers: ‘If you look at the products that we traditionally import from Spain, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, consignments of these are ideal for hiding drugs. It is also cheaper to purchase large quantities of drugs in Spain than anywhere else. If you take all these factors into consideration it is easy to see why criminals moved out there. They could organise their business more efficiently.'

Christy Kinahan and John Cunningham are the two undisputed godfathers of Irish crime based in Puerto Banus. The Thompson gang sourced their drugs from them.

John ‘The Colonel' Cunningham was one of the main members of ‘The General' Martin Cahill's gang. Cunningham infamously burnt his right hand after torching the van that was used in the £2-million raid on O'Connor's jewellery warehouse in 1983. He still has a scar today. The fifty-nine-year-old really came to public attention in Ireland when he was handed a seventeen-year jail term in 1986 for one of the most high-profile kidnappings ever carried out here. Guinness heiress Jennifer Guinness was snatched from her home in Howth, Co. Dublin, in April 1986 by a gang led by Cunningham. A ransom of £2.5 million was demanded, and for five days Gardaí around the country combed empty barns and houses in search of the hostage. Officers eventually tracked the gang down to a house on Waterloo Road in Dublin 4. After a brief exchange of gun-fire and protracted negotiations, the kidnappers surrendered. In 1996 Cunningham walked out of Shelton Abbey open prison, after almost completing his sentence, and fled the country, moving to Amsterdam. It is believed that John Gilligan arranged a false passport for him and set him up with contacts in Amsterdam when he arrived. He quickly took advantage of Gilligan's hospitality and developed into a major player in the drugs importation business. However, Dutch police had learned of his growing reputation. So they had him under constant surveillance, which eventually paid off big time. In February 2001, Cunningham was jailed for nine years by a court in Amsterdam for his role in a multi-million-euro drugs and guns smuggling ring between Ireland and the Netherlands. Dutch police and Gardaí were involved in the lengthy operation that had gone on for several years. Cunningham was arrested at a house near Schiphol Airport in March 2000, with a fully loaded pistol in his possession. Follow-up searches recovered nearly €10 million worth of cannabis, ecstasy, machine guns and other weapons. Some of the items were found hidden in a swimming pool at an apartment used by Cunningham and his wife Mary.

Cunningham had been under surveillance for months as part of ‘Operation Clover', which also involved senior Gardaí co-operating with their Dutch and Belgian counterparts. The high-tech surveillance operation involved phone-taps, photographs and videos, and proved that Cunningham was the main figure in a gang that smuggled several shipments of drugs and guns into Ireland. He was careful about how he operated. In telephone conversations with his criminal associates, he only spoke in code. ‘Wallpaper' was code for money, ‘computers' was cocaine and ‘jokes' was weapons, while ‘nuts' was a code for ecstasy. When he was specifying the amount of drugs involved in a transaction he used house numbers, and mobile phone numbers were given in SOUTHRIDGE code. Dutch military experts later cracked the code. S was one, O was two, U was three and so on, up until E, which was code for ten. Suddenly, and much to the annoyance and confusion of Cunningham, various police forces started to seize his shipments. He was filmed meeting a truck driver who was heading to Ireland at a motorway stop in Antwerp, Belgium. Cunningham handed him an assault rifle and semi-automatic handgun to take with him. Cunningham was later recorded on the phone describing how the driver was worried because the handgun was too bulky to fit in his pocket. The driver was arrested before he left Belgium.

On another occasion, he sought to set up a new supply route because too many of his shipments were being intercepted. He met an Englishman in Blackpool and was given a diamond ring as a gift that was worth €7,500. It had been stolen in a robbery in Manchester, and Cunningham later gave it to his wife as a Christmas present. The police recorded Mary Cunningham, oblivious to the origin of the ring, bragging to her friends in Ireland over the phone about her swanky Christmas gift.

The court heard how one shipment organised by Cunningham in December 1998 was hidden in pallets of pitta bread. It was only discovered when a forklift operator accidentally opened up one of the pallets at a warehouse in Castleblayney in Co. Monaghan. Cunningham was so paranoid that he did not trust anybody to do deals on his behalf and that is why he was so hands-on. Police believe that from his Amsterdam base, Cunningham shipped as much as €25 million worth of drugs into Ireland in just a few years. He was buying ecstasy tablets for £1 from his supplier, and was making a 700 per cent profit, after all his expenses were paid, when the drugs were sent to Ireland. In November 2004, after completing his Dutch sentence, Cunningham was extradited back to Ireland and sent back to prison to serve the remainder of his term for the Guinness kidnap. He was released after a matter of months and moved to Puerto Banus, where he re-established himself as a major drug importer, using all his old contacts.

Christy Kinahan is fifty-two and originally hails from the Oliver Bond flats complex in Dublin's city centre. He is a former heroin addict who got his first criminal conviction back in 1979. In 1987 he was jailed for six years after being caught in possession of heroin worth over £100,000. Soon after his release, he was caught with £16,000 worth of stolen cheques that had been taken in an armed robbery at a North Dublin bank in 1993. He fled to England, but returned home four years later and was given a four-year jail term. After being in prison for eleven out of fifteen years, he decided to educate himself, leave Ireland for the continent and go into the large-scale drugs business. He fancied himself as a bit of a gentleman and used his time locked up to educate himself. He learned several European languages, as well as earning a degree in sociology. Kinahan was so determined to get his degree that he even turned down the chance of early release to leave Portlaoise Prison in the late 1990s in order to finish his degree. For the best part of ten years Kinahan has built himself into one of the biggest drug importers in all of Europe. He lives in San Pedro, close to Marbella, and counts John Cunningham as one of his best friends and one of his most trusted business associates. Kinahan has been nicknamed the ‘Dapper Don' because he has shed his working-class Dublin accent for a more cultured European brogue, and is always seen in the best of clothes made by top tailors. One of his favourite outfits is a white silk suit with a Panama hat. Kinahan is actively targeted by police forces in Ireland, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Portugal. He features in intelligence reports by the US Drug Enforcement Administration. He is also one of Europol's top targets. He has cultivated drug-dealing associates in the Russian mafia, Israeli drugs gangs, and Colombian drug cartels. The vast majority of drugs that end up on Irish streets have originated through Kinahan and his contacts.

Paddy Doyle and Freddie Thompson were supplied by him. Doyle would have done business directly with the ‘Dapper Don'. The sheer size of Kinahan's business empire is illustrated by the fact that since 2002, various police agencies throughout continental Europe, including An Garda Síochána, have seized in excess of €50 million worth of drugs that originated from Kinahan. After being caught handling drugs in both Ireland and the Netherlands, he learned his lesson. He now refuses to directly touch any drugs, and plays a hands-off role. He now operates in the background – leaving his minions to take all the risk, while he pockets the rewards.

Not far below the two dons is Peter ‘Fatso' Mitchell, a forty-year-old who is originally from Summerhill in Dublin's north inner city, and who was a key member of John Gilligan's drug gang. He had fled Ireland and permanently moved to Spain in 1996, allegedly after helping to organise the murder of Veronica Guerin. Mitchell didn't waste much time in establishing links with international smuggling syndicates in Britain, Spain and the Netherlands. Mitchell lived in a €1.5 million villa in the millionaires' playground of Puerto Banus. He owned the Paparazzi bar, which was popular with other Irish drug dealers, including Paddy Doyle and Freddie Thompson. In November 2004, Dutch police arrested him along with his cousin Paddy, while they were in the process of organising a shipment of drugs and guns to be sent home. The two men received 20-month jail sentences. ‘Fatso' went by the name ‘Anthony Swanson'. His true identity was only confirmed after CAB detectives paid a visit to the mystery man and realised who he actually was. After his release, Mitchell vowed that he would never again directly touch drugs or guns, so now leaves it to his employees. However, Mitchell obviously rubbed somebody up the wrong way – he was lucky to escape a murder attempt in April 2008, when he was shot twice in the shoulder outside a bar in Puerto Banus. He is a close friend of Christy Kinahan's son Daniel.

Both John Cunningham and Christy Kinahan are consummate businessmen who use diplomacy to operate alongside their international counterparts in harmony, without drawing the attention of the local police or government. The main players on the Spanish Costas are the Russian and Turkish mafias, who operate below the radar, live in private gated communities and do not flaunt their wealth. Discretion is the only way to have a long and safe career in Spain.

If Irish criminals operate with professionalism and respect, and adhere to the long established ways of doing business, they are usually OK. Many haven't though, and have ended up dead or missing, the likelihood of their bodies ever being found being remote. In September 2005,

Sean Dunne from Donaghmede in North Dublin, who was involved in large-scale drug importation, disappeared without a trace. His family believe that he was chopped up and buried in an unmarked grave. In January 2004, members of the Russian mob lured Stephen Sugg and Shane Coates to a meeting. The two leaders of the feared ‘Westies' group from Blanchardstown in West Dublin met the Russian mob and disappeared. It was not until July 2006 that their bodies were found in a concrete grave next to a warehouse in Catral, near Alicante. Both had been shot in the head. It is thought that they had tried to double-cross the Russian mob during a drug deal, and paid the ultimate price. In January 2007, John ‘The Mexican' McKeown, from Finglas, vanished in Torrevieja near Alicante. McKeown organised drugs shipments on behalf of Martin ‘Marlo' Hyland – he is also presumed to have been murdered. In January 2009, drug dealer Richard Keogh, from Cabra, in North Dublin, was shot dead outside a casino in Benalmadena. There was suspected Venezuelan involvement in his murder. The following month, armed robber and heroin addict Christopher Gilroy, from Dublin's north inner city, was spirited out of Ireland after carrying out a double murder for a Finglas gang. It was feared that he couldn't be trusted to keep quiet. He vanished and is also thought to have been murdered.

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Spain suited Paddy Doyle and Freddie Thompson and they grew to enjoy it. Their lifestyle in Spain is not one that ordinary working people can relate to – they can only dream of it. Doyle had a luxury three-bedroom apartment in Cancelada, in a gated community close to a golf course. His days revolved around waking up late, going to the gym and working out for up to two hours. This was followed by a long lunch in nearby Puerto Banus or Marbella, washed down with several bottles of good wine. Business was conducted at lunch and in the early afternoon. This could involve meeting other criminals to arrange drugs shipments or going to pay people money that was owed or collect cash that was owed to his gang. In the evenings Doyle would drive the fifteen-minute journey down to Puerto Banus and meet up with the likes of ‘Fatso' Mitchell and Gary Hutch (a twenty-seven-year-old from the north inner city). Hutch had a villa in the Vista Golf luxury resort in Estepona. They would spend the night drinking in Mitchell's bar, and, invariably, ended up in the popular Linekers English bar and nightclub in New Town. There they would drink for half the night – with many taking cocaine – before going back to bed and doing it all again the next day. Doyle and the other well-heeled Irish criminals forked out €20,000 each per year to enjoy private parking at the upmarket Puerto Banus port, which is not accessible to ordinary members of the public. While down at the port, Doyle and his cronies would rub shoulders with multi-millionaires from around the world, who probably had no idea just who these young Irish people were, or of the reputations they had acquired at home. Doyle's friends and family frequently went to visit him in Spain because he was exiled from Ireland. Apparently, his tan never faded in the near year-round sunshine.

When Freddie Thompson started to go to Spain to supervise Doyle, he initially stayed with his mate, but the gang is believed to have purchased several apartments in the heart of Puerto Banus, and Thompson subsequently relocated there. With Doyle permanently in Spain and Thompson spending frequent periods there because of the ‘Whacker' Duffy situation, Thompson was eager to ingratiate himself to Christy Kinahan, his main supplier. So much so, that in January 2008, he arranged for one of his main mentors, the notorious Martin ‘The Viper' Foley, to be shot and killed. Gardaí regarded fifty-five-year-old Foley as a serious criminal. Foley is involved in protection rackets and general criminality. He is from Cashel Avenue in Crumlin. Brian Rattigan and Freddie Thompson and their respective gangs would have looked up to Foley when they were growing up, and they regarded him as a father figure to many members of both sides of the feud. When Declan Gavin started his criminal career, he worked for ‘The Viper'. Foley was clever and managed to stay in with both feuding gangs. He rose to prominence as one of ‘The General', Martin Cahill's, most trusted lieutenants in the 1980s, and has been a controversial figure ever since. In 2006, he went to the High Court to stop the
Sunday World
newspaper from running stories about him, which he claimed endangered his life. He said his safety was being put in danger by claims in the newspaper that he was a Garda informant. His solicitor described a four-page article by journalist Paul Williams, headlined ‘Foley's a dead man walking', as being ‘among the most profoundly irresponsible journalism and editorship of a widely circulating national newspaper that I could conceive of'. Foley conveniently forgot to tell the court that it was his associates who masterminded a campaign of terror against the high-profile journalist – even leaving a pipe bomb under his car, which led to the journalist needing permanent armed Garda security.