Ireland must act swiftly to dismantle drug trafficking routes established by the Kinahan cartel, which turned the country into a transit point for illicit substances, according to a former U.S. Treasury Department official. Greg Gatjanis, who was instrumental in placing sanctions on key Kinahan figures, emphasized the need to prevent rival criminal organizations from exploiting the vacuum created by recent arrests and extraditions.
"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 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?" Gatjanis stated. He previously served as the Head of Global Targeting for Sanctions at the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
Gatjanis noted the Kinahan organization's rapid ascent from a minor player to an international cartel comparable to Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, Italy's 'Ndrangheta and Camorra, and Japan's Yakuza. He observed that powerful criminal entities can emerge and pose significant threats to national stability within a mere three to five years.
"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," he explained.
The Kinahan group's global expansion involved establishing new drug trafficking routes, sourcing cocaine and heroin from South American cartels, and utilizing Ireland as a key transit hub into Europe. "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," Gatjanis said.
Irish authorities share these concerns. Detective Séamus Boland, head of the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (GDOCB), has previously warned that new major players are emerging and preventing them from becoming significant threats is a national priority. Boland indicated that the GDOCB is pursuing gangs like "The Family," currently the state's largest drug dealers, with the same methods used against the Kinahans. Gardaí have identified 22 "transnational" gangs operating in Ireland with connections to international criminal networks. Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly recently stated that efforts to combat organized crime are ongoing, with other individuals involved in transnational organized crime being targeted.