Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: Who is Daniel Kinahan and why is he significant?
It's the 29th of January, 2021, and Irish crime reporter Ken Foy is on the phone with mob boss Daniel Kinahan.
Look, I tell you, you understand where you're coming from, but when I said agenda, like I said, don't take it in a disrespectful way. Everybody has an agenda, whether your agenda is to be a better journalist, more popular, make more money, do a book. We all have work in case.
So Daniel, would you think then, in conjunction with your lawyers, will you give me a statement before it happens, that we can just say that this is your viewpoint? I'm not willing to do that. I'm willing to do it from there to give a statement and him saying what I'm saying. And I'm never going to give a statement to any Irish journalist ever. But if you show me that you are basically...
Like, why don't you pursue the people going into the Regency Hotel with 24 people and basically put the same magnifying glass on that with 200 innocent people in place? I was the one who tried to kill, but yeah, on the monster that the witch was on. Obviously, that's clear to see, Ken, no?
This is Daniel Kinahan, King of Spin, a four-part crime world special. Part one, Scoop. Right, so the date of this is pretty important. Here you are on the phone with Daniel Kinahan. There's a reason for that. And of course, the reason is that this show on BBC Panorama, which is going to focus on Daniel Kinahan and his position in boxing. and his domination of world boxing at this stage.
Ads are running across the TV. This is really the first time that Kinahan, there's been a deep dive into Kinahan from the point of view of his links to organised crime and his position in boxing. That's happened really outside Ireland. We've done a lot of the reporting, a lot of the legwork here. But the BBC Panorama show is going to give a big punch to him, really.
Yes, so Nicola, at a particular time, there was a big lead up to that BBC show. So I suppose it's funny, with our good colleague here Niall, we would have discussed it and there was, for want of a better word, an intermediary at the time. Someone that could act as a middle person, if you like.
So as we became more and more aware that this BBC documentary was going out and the effect it was going to have on his boxing situation, we felt that it was an opportune time to try and at least get a statement off Daniel Kinahan. Because at that stage, of course, in 2021, yeah, look, we've been writing about it for years. Obviously, the Regency had been covered in the international newspapers.
But really, he's in the clear generally in the media across the world. And that's why this conversation, it's so interesting, really, he has with you, because you can see how big a deal it is this Panorama programme is going to be for him. In the course of the chat, that's pointed out to him a couple of times, but he didn't need me to point that out.
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Chapter 2: What was the purpose of the BBC Panorama documentary?
suddenly there was an intermediary had arrived on the scene. We won't go too much into that person. And that was kind of parked. And I remember even discussing the intermediary with Niall. We didn't really act on anything.
Had the intermedia reached out to you?
Yes, basically in the sense that the feeling was that Daniel and others had felt this particular, and it was just a straight up news article, had been fair to them, unlike, in their opinion, unlike the way it had been covered in other Irish media. So, look, we were, this was...
It was something that we thought was kind of, well, look, maybe that's someone to contact in the future or something like that. So the months rolled on and we, you know, it was there. But obviously, as we were saying earlier, the vista of the BBC panorama. Like, obviously, this was all during the height of COVID here, by the way.
So there wasn't a whole lot of activity on the streets in relation to the cartels' activities in terms of shootings or anything like that. But the BBC Panorama documentary was coming up. It was heavily advertised. And it was kind of decided then that we might... I suppose at the outset was to try and get a statement from Daniel Kinahan in relation to the matter.
Well, the hope was a proper interview, which he declined, obviously, at the time. Because he'd never spoken to the media at this point. He'd had, I think, done one little interview with a boxing magazine. So the hopes of getting him on the phone must have been like it wasn't expected, because I remember it, obviously, at the time.
I mean, it would have been the last thing you would have expected to just get a call from him. No, I remember that morning, actually, and just waiting by the phone, if you like, and yeah, there was a... I think it might have been he was two hours late by the time he actually called me. And you're kind of thinking maybe you've been sold a pub here. Is he really going to call? And he did.
The Panorama documentary would reveal within days of this conversation how Daniel Kinahan was at the very top of boxing, world boxing. It would go into his background and... allegations as they were at the time that he was heading up the international cartel, the Kinahan Organised Crime Group.
The host of the documentary, Darren McIntyre, had travelled to the US where he'd called to the home of a guy called Bob Yallon, who was the new CEO of MTK. And that's the boxing promotions and management company which was co-founded by Kinahan in 2012 in Spain, which had moved to Dubai and which Kinahan had taken a backseat from. He was no longer, we were told at that point, involved in it.
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Chapter 3: How did the conversation between Ken Foy and Daniel Kinahan unfold?
you don't get a 10 times a bonus. No, and I think as well, within that conversation, I mean, I think he did have an inflated value, and I mean in monetary terms more than anything, of the actual, and it's just the way the media, we are now in terms of,
finances, he definitely had an inflated value of the monetary worth of anything, whether it would be an interview, whether it was the statement that was ultimately given out. Look, it certainly didn't make any of us any extra few, Bob, that's for sure.
Yeah, he sort of really believes that his words or him opening his mouth is going to result in a kind of a gold rush for a media organisation.
Which is, as we all know, it is completely wrong.
Yeah. But do you see that way he's looking for, he wants an independent media, high profile media person, a freelancer, whatever as he calls it. And this is because he's been kind of working away, slogging away in the background on his own promotional campaign.
He's been using accounts like Twitter and we're going to go into the detail of that more forensically over the coming conversations we're having. on this four-part special.
But it all really starts for him in the aftermath of the Regency Hotel attack, when anonymous accounts started publicly naming those believed to have been involved in the attempted hit on Daniel Kinahan at the Boxing Way Inn in February 2016.
Yeah, like since the advent of social media, Bebo, back in 2008 or whatever, there have been obviously accounts that have been linked to ganglands in Dublin, but mostly young lads slagging each other off. But in the aftermath of the Regency, when the stakes got so much bigger, you see this kind of professionalisation of that propaganda campaign happening.
It started off on Twitter with a few anonymous sites and it quickly progresses to books, you know, videos, music videos, which would go into documentaries, everything. But I suppose he's stuck here, Daniel, isn't he? Because he's used those avenues that are those independent avenues he's talked about.
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Chapter 4: What strategies does Kinahan use for media manipulation?
to Porto Banús and to 2012.
Yeah, which is, if you consider we've spoken about Operation Shovel, that was in 2010 where the Spanish police, with great fanfare, broke in or raided the Canadian homes of Daniel, his brother and his father and declared the end of the Irish Mafia in Spain. But two years later in 2012, by the time the MGM gym is open in Marbella,
They're living freely and, you know, they're partying in Port-au-Penus. They're mixing with all sorts of celebrities. And this gym gets opened in MGM in conjunction with a very well-known boxer, Matthew Macklin, who has...
there has been a link to the Kinnahans, not a criminal link, but a link going back, going back really another half decade at least beforehand, which you would have even written about at the time, I remember you going over to a match in Michaelham Fife, was it in Birmingham? It was, yeah. That was, Niall, that was I think June 2010. Yeah.
It was one of those occasions, years used to go by without Freddie Thompson being photographed. So actually... It was micro rather than macro in those days. That was the task when we went to that boxing event in Birmingham, was to actually get a photo of Freddie Thompson. Now, there was Liam Branigan, I think Dean Howe, there was a few others there, that we photographed.
And in fact, I think Daniel Kinnan may have been at the event, but we didn't manage to get a snap of him. So, yeah, Matthew Macklin has previously described himself... it's years ago now, but that Daniel Kinnaman was his best friend and Matthew Macklin is not involved in crime.
But you could see at that particular stage even that boxing and Daniel Kinnaman and the whole organisation were starting to get very intertwined. So they opened this gym in 2012 and they're straight away, they are running a bit of social media. And probably their first big event is this sort of celebrity event, but they have for charity.
I think there's 500 guests and celebs are starting to come and go at the gym. And Daniel Kinnan at that stage, Nicolay, you get his Twitter handle because he doesn't call himself Daniel Kinnan, but it's pretty obvious that it's him and he's not hiding it.
Well, I was actually out in Spain around this time, 2012, 2013, because, of course, we'd had Operation Shovel when the Spanish police had told us that they had shut down the Irish mafia. They had all been taken from their beds, brought before the courts, put into prison, got bail, and they were out and about. And the word was the Kinnehans were back and they were bigger than ever.
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Chapter 5: How does Kinahan perceive his portrayal in the media?
And photographers on that occasion were also told to move on or else... No police were involved in that. It was a time in policing in Ireland that you would not have been proud of, I have to say, while working as a journalist, trying to expose the activities, the strength and the belief in the untouchability of this cartel.
You always seem to be there alone with like either a camera or a pen, which, you know...
I'll give you an example of that era. Actually, Nicola, the late, great Mick O'Neill, he died tragically last year. One of the best photographers we've ever had in terms of covering gangland. But there was a big guard raid on Paul Rice, who still exists, but he wouldn't be the force that he was. But he was a Kinahan guy in those times.
And Mick obviously had got some tip off that this raid, I think it involved cab and it was armed guards and all the rest. and Mick was there taking his photos and a senior guard went and confiscated his camera, no less, and actually took it off. Yeah, Matt. Yeah, what he basically, you know what I mean? It's like taking a delivery driver's car off them for basically doing his job.
Look, Mick got the camera back later, I think that evening, and the senior detective who's still with us actually apologised for his hot-headed behaviour. But why I bring it up is that's the kind of climate we were dealing with in those days with the guards. Do you know what I mean? Like taking a camera.
Yeah, and they certainly seemed to be unable to cope with the fact that these were now becoming a transnational crime organisation. The fact that things were being directed from Spain and, you know, it was happening back in Ireland.
I think it was a dangerous... Period of time for journalists as well. You're talking 2012 up until 2015, 16, because we still had the ability to get close to them, up close and personal, to photograph them, to detail what they were doing. They were over and back to Ireland.
You know, you still had those opportunities in Spain, although it was a little bit more difficult and dangerous to work out there. Dubai is impossible. You know, this is the next period of their lives when they move on there. I think it's illegal, actually, to do the kind of work we do. So it was the last opportunity to sort of detail what they were at. And it probably was more dangerous.
In hindsight, you look back, I certainly do, on some of the jobs I did, and you wouldn't be sending anyone on them now.
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