The arrest of Daniel Kinahan in April sent shockwaves through the criminal underworld. One of the world's most wanted men, he had led authorities on a global game of cat and mouse for more than a decade. After fleeing Ireland following a botched hit job by a rival gang, he settled on the manmade Palm Jumeirah island with his wife Caoimhe Robinson. The couple lived the high life as US and European law enforcement accused him of leading a super cartel.
But he was not alone in the glitzy gangster's paradise, where crooks could operate with impunity and keep their transnational businesses going. His glittering wedding at the seven-star Burj Al Arab hotel in 2017 was attended by drug lords and mob bosses.
Wedding Guests and Wanted Men
The guest list included Raffaele Imperiale, a senior member of Italy's Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia; Alejandro Salgado Vega, Spain's most powerful drug lord; and Edin Gacanin, a Bosnian-Dutch cocaine trafficker referred to as Europe's Escobar. The gathering was like a roll call of the crooked, criminal and corrupt and proof that the city had become a safe haven for the world's most notorious criminals.
One of the UK's most wanted men, Leon Cullen, was another holed up in Dubai until police finally caught up with him. The gangland boss supplied drugs and guns around the world while running a money laundering business. Cullen and his twin brother "used violence to intimidate and control" while running a drugs and money laundering business, police said. He had fled to the United Arab Emirates in January 2018 and was extradited from his bolthole.
Another alleged mob boss holed up in Dubai was Angelo Pandeli, a former Hells Angel leader accused of controlling Australia's billion-dollar drug trade after banding together with the Kinahan cartel. He denies the accusations and has never been charged.
Dubai's Appeal for Criminals
Former New South Wales Crime Commissioner Tim O'Connor told Australia's 60 Minutes that as there is no tax in Dubai, it is a great place to move illicit funds around without the authorities being able to trace it. He added: "If you're in the international drug business Dubai is a great place to do business from. First off its geographic location is great, it's a hop, skip and a jump into Europe and not far to Southeast Asia. Secondly if you want to be moving in the circles with International drug suppliers it's a place to go because a lot of the European people are already there."
Dozens of the world's worst villains have bought property in the Middle Eastern metropolis and their names appeared in an extensive database of property records obtained by a global coalition of investigative journalists.
Professor Jodi Vittori, a corruption and illicit wealth expert, told 60 Minutes that underworld figures aren't just allowed into Dubai, they're embraced. And the flow of their dirty money actually underpins the booming real estate market in the city. She said: "It really highlights the role that the UAE plays as the sort of pirate entrop over the world. A place where any sort of businessman – good, bad, corrupt or full out criminal – can operate with impunity and keep their businesses going. One of the questions is how much the economy relies on this and it may be that the criminal activity props up a lot of what keeps Dubai the bright shiny city that it is."
Real Estate and Money Laundering
Undercover footage captured by a Swedish television reporter shows real estate agents don't seem to care where the money comes from when wanted people on the run from the authorities splash the cash on their mega mansions. Prof Vittori said the city's relaxed real estate regulation had made it a playground for organised criminals. She added: "If you're going to engage in a great deal of money laundering for criminal activity or otherwise you're going to need a robust real estate market. It really comes in handy for being able to launder millions and sometimes even billions of dollars in cash. You just can't do that in other situations. Maybe you can do that with artwork, maybe to an extent with gold but there's not very many other ways. And unlike with artwork or gold, you can live in the place at the same time that you're laundering the funds through it. So under the right conditions you can live very freely, presumably with the knowledge of those in charge of the country. You'd be able to operate your banking, your money laundering, park your yacht there, park your aircraft there, buy a palatial mansion, put your kids in school... all of those sorts of activities that you couldn't get away with anywhere else in the world. It's also been a place that has allowed individuals who are criminals to be able to openly buy real estate in a way that would be much harder to do anywhere else."
Cheap flights, large ex-pat communities and a regular flow of tourists led fugitives to believe they could maintain a low profile in those areas. The switch to the Gulf may be linked to the success of authorities hunting down suspects in Spain and the Netherlands.
Crackdown and Concerns
The United Arab Emirates has sought to crack down on transnational crime in recent years. Many of the guests at the Kinahan wedding have since been detained and deported. But the Dubai property leak highlights the grim truth that drug trafficking and organised crime is occurring on an unprecedented scale and is a billion pound global business.
And even if the UAE gets even tougher on the crooks in the country, Mr O'Connor fears it won't do much to stop it. He said: "Ultimately they just might move to another jurisdiction where they can do the same thing."
