Garda Chief Superintendent Seamus Boland

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211 appearances 8 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 10 Jul

Garda Chief Superintendent Seamus Boland’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 7.

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Crime World · The Science of Fear - The Making of Ireland’s Mafia Godfather (Episode 1) · 6 Jul 2026 podcast

Previously, with people who were working close to the US law enforcement, the US made contact with John Direct in relation to they needed to talk to people.

They had concerns around what the US was seeing.

in the Kinahan nexus internationally and the people that they were dealing with.

So therein then commenced conversations between my team, Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, Assistant Commissioner O'Driscoll and the US agencies, in particular the US Customs and Border Force and CBP and the DEA.

So at a later stage in those conversations, the National Crime Agency were brought in on that as well because they would have had whatever information was available to the UK authorities.

It was important that that information and Europol, because Europol would have a lot of information in relation to the wider European structures that the Kinahan Group was involved in.

So all of us came together to work with particularly the U.S.

Treasury Department to convince them really as well that we believed that this group, the Kinahans, were a group because of the threat level posed by them, not alone to Europe, but also to business structures that were starting to be established over in the U.S.,

but that there were people who should be considered for sanctions by the US authorities and the rest is history.

So it's no mistake or it's not by default that those sanctions were announced at such a high level here in Dublin with John O'Driscoll to the fore and being compared on that day of that very significant and large event.

We as an organization have learned huge lessons in how to tackle these groups with the assistance of our international colleagues.

There's a lot of good work has happened.

It's proven it ain't easy, but we have to be resilient.

So from our perspective, you know, when we make a decision that a group is a criminal organization that warrants being classified

at such a high level that they are a priority for our resources, that we must continue to investigate that group and target the decision makers, the facilitators and the neighbours of that group until they are completely dismantled.

or until they no longer impact on this jurisdiction, because our responsibility is keeping people safe.

Our responsibility is making Ireland a hostile environment for these people to work in.

So if that takes...

You know, we've done a lot of talk at the beginning about five-year plans and we've probably proven five-year plans for some of these groups that have reached the international levels that they actually have are more like 10-year plans.

They may even be 15-year plans by the time we're finished.

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