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IRELAND’S MOST SENIOR organised crime investigator has said the main driving force behind large-scale cocaine smuggling around our shores are Irish criminals but that in the background they have aligned with Iranian-backed organised crime gangs.
Speaking to The Journal recently, Detective Chief Superintendent Seamus Boland – who leads the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (GNDOCB) – said Ireland’s own criminal networks are pitching for business with cartels in South America and in the Middle East.
It’s currently understood that the Kinahans are already heavily engaged with Italian mafia, particularly centred around Naples, and with cartels in Peru and in Colombia.
But Boland believes that Kinahan-aligned, Dutch-based criminals are also working with Iranian crime groups linked to assassinations ordered by the Tehran regime of dissidents.
In September 2023, Boland’s unit as well as other gardaí, Defence Forces personnel and Customs were involved in the capture of €157m worth of Cocaine onboard the MV Matthew bulk cargo ship. Over the next two years, significant links between the ship, Iran and Hezbollah were uncovered by investigators.
“The other important thing about all of it, the activity that we’re seeing around our coastline in recent times, they’re all being brought here by our own – it’s our Irish criminals who are telling them, come to Ireland. Try Ireland,” Boland told The Journal.
“[They say] this is a good place – [and] with the local knowledge and the touting for the businesses, Irish criminals are bringing it here.”
Giving a specific example of the interconnected nature of their enterprises, he said a senior Dutch criminal arrested in Ireland was linked to the assassination of an Iranian dissident in the Netherlands.
Naoufal Fassih was arrested by gardaí inside a Kinahan-owned apartment on Baggot Street in Dublin city centre in 2016. He was subsequently extradited to the Netherlands on foot of a European Arrest Warrant (EAW), issued by public prosecutors in Amsterdam.
Fassih then stood trial for the murder of Iranian dissident Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi. The 56-year-old Samadi had been sentenced to death in Iran after being accused of planting a bomb at the Islamic Republic party’s headquarters in 1981, killing 73 people. Dutch authorities have said that they suspect he was murdered on the orders of the Iranian regime.
Fassih was found guilty at trial and jailed. But the Court of Appeal in the Netherlands found that while Fassih had tried to solicit the gunmen to commit the murder, there was not enough evidence he was involved in the actual act of assassination.
The court ruled that being an “intermediary and conduit” is not enough to be guilty of murder under Dutch law. At the appeal, he was convicted of the crime of attempted solicitation of murder.
Later, Dutch media reported that an appeal had been lodged against the finding – not just by the prosecutors but also by Naoufal Fassih himself.
His other convictions for money laundering and a separate gun attack were upheld. He is currently serving a prison sentence of 25 years and four months.
The MV Matthew case saw a number of men convicted of their involvement in an attempt to import cocaine into Ireland. The Journal discovered, through sources both here and abroad, that there were elements of the trafficking operation backed by Iranian interests and that some of the motivation for it was to help fundraise for Hezbollah.
Boland said that from what he has seen there are “legitimate questions” to be asked about the connections between Dutch organised crime, criminals in the Middle East and the government in Iran.
He said that there is ample evidence that the so-called Mocro Mafia have been operating with the Kinahan Organised Crime Group in Ireland. The Mocro Mafia are groups of various drug gangs in Netherlands and Belgium with links to Iran and Morocco.
He said that the arrest of Iranian nationals in a number of operations here shows the reach of the gangs and drew a direct link between Fassih and the murder of the Iranian dissident.
“We have him [Samadi] murdered by an organised crime gang, the Macro, mafia and we see evidence recovered by the investigation teams where the organised crime group are discussing this particular murder as to why this man is being murdered.
“I think the comment that comes back is the Iranians want him dead. Is that Iranian organised crime or what?” he said.
Boland said there are large amounts of evidence supporting “direct business links between organised crime in the Netherlands, which is clearly linked to the Kinahan organised crime gang and Iran”.
He said this raises legitimate questions about those connections. Further he said there has been evidence from the United States Department of Treasury of links between Venezuela and Iran and Hezbollah.
He said there is evidence of Hezbollah operatives operating in Venezuela and involved in trafficking from South America to Europe.
“In our investigations of the Kinahan criminal organisation we’ve direct links to company structures leading to locations in Iran as well,” he said.
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