The garda hierarchy is dangling the US $15m reward, and a new life in the US federal witness programme, to coax Kinahan cartel lieutenants to give information leading to the prosecution of its leaders.
On Monday, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris and deputy commissioner Justin Kelly called on cartel associates to have a “really good think” about their future lives as further extraditions from the UAE increase in likelihood.
The warning follows the first extradition from the Middle-Eastern state of an Irish national back to Ireland when senior cartel lieutenant Sean McGovern was sent back home to face gangland charges.
At a joint US-Ireland launch in Dublin in April 2022, American authorities offered a combined $15m reward for information leading to the prosecution of Daniel Kinahan, his brother Christopher, and their dad and cartel founder, Christy.
Mr Harris said: “I’d like to point out [to] the other senior lieutenants in the Kinahan organised crime group who are now facing justice or who are now imprisoned, the sanctions and the rewards still stand.
“There’s $15m there of reward money through the federal law enforcement authorities of the US, so that is still in play.
“I just want to remind other members of the gang the perilous position they are now in, that ourselves and other law enforcement are fixed on them and are fixed on bringing them, all of them, to justice.”
He said the leaders should be afraid.
“They should be worried now for a number of years,” Mr Harris said.
“All of them should be worried and thinking about the choices, the serious life choices that are now ahead of them in respect of what to do over the coming months.”
Mr Kelly said that a couple of years ago, when he was assistant commissioner of operations and security, both he and the Garda Commissioner said gardaí would be “relentless”, adding that the extradition of Mr McGovern was “absolute evidence” of that.
He said that, at one point, there were 47 members of the cartel in jail.
He called on Kinahan lieutenants to have a “really good think” about what choices they make in the coming months.
One experienced security source said that Mr McGovern’s extradition “has spooked” some of the cartel figures.
Separately, the Garda Commissioner said suggestions that gardaí should have used a cadaver dog capable of detecting human remains at the home of Tina Satchwell when she went missing in 2017 would form part of a review he had ordered.
Richard Satchwell was given a life sentence for the murder of his wife in 2017. Her remains were found in a deep grave under the stairs in October 2023.
Last weekend, justice minister Jim O’Callaghan indicated that probably a cadaver dog should have been used in 2017.
Reacting, Mr Harris said: “We want to review all those decisions back in 2017, but what I know from the reporting that I’ve seen is that the suspicion was that harm had been caused to Tina Satchwell but there was no suspicion that her body was actually there.”
