Christy Kinahan owes more than $1,000 in fines for overstaying his visa by 81 days. His associate Ian Dixon faces fines exceeding $11,000 for an 852-day overstay. These are not the hallmarks of men living in the shadows. They are the paper trail of a cartel operating, at least in part, in plain sight, and the public has a direct stake in understanding how that became possible.
The Kinahan Organised Crime Group, a $1.5 billion transnational network linked to drug trafficking, money laundering and arms smuggling, has maintained active residence permits in Dubai despite US sanctions imposed in 2022 and international fugitive status. A review of publicly available United Arab Emirates immigration records by Bellingcat and The Sunday Times found that Christopher Kinahan Jr, son of cartel founder Christy Kinahan, received a renewed two-year residence permit on July 20, less than two weeks before the investigation was published. His previous visa had expired in December 2024. Bernard Clancy, another sanctioned cartel member, holds an active permit renewed in January.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/08/01/welcome-to-dubai-kinahan-cartels-visas-revealed/.
Both men are listed as sales officers at companies named Island Star Tourism and Al Matn Goods Wholesalers LLC respectively. The managing director of Island Star Tourism told Bellingcat that Christopher Kinahan Jr works as “commission-based staff, not in-office staff” and that he had never met him in person. Asked how the company name appeared on the visa, the director said “I don’t know,” adding that if the UAE had concerns about Kinahan Jr, it would “not give permission” for his residence.
That answer will do little to reassure the public in countries where the Kinahan cartel has caused documented harm. The group’s senior leadership, including Christy Kinahan (69), his sons Daniel (49) and Christopher Jr (45), cousin Ian Dixon (36), and associates Sean McGovern (40), Bernard Clancy (48) and Johnny Morrissey (66), was sanctioned by Washington in 2022. Investigators have also connected the group to Iran’s intelligence services and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah.
The UAE reportedly banned the Kinahans from doing business and froze approximately 200 million euros in cartel assets following the sanctions. The visa records tell a different story. Bellingcat and The Sunday Times accessed the information through publicly available UAE government websites by entering data from the US sanctions notice, including ID numbers, passport numbers, birth dates and nationality.
What the records reveal is a long and documented history of engagement with UAE immigration authorities. Four of the six key cartel figures entered the UAE years before the 2016 attack on Daniel Kinahan in Dublin that triggered the feud leading to the group’s full relocation to the region. Christopher Kinahan Jr holds passport records linked to short-term visas issued as early as September 2013. Ian Dixon’s earliest visa appeared in 2015. Sean McGovern and Bernard Clancy’s earliest visas date to March and April 2016 respectively, the months immediately following the Dublin attack.
Christy Kinahan used a British passport for his immigration file, with the earliest known visa issued in February 2007. Records also show an Irish passport under the alias “Christopher O’Brien” generated 31 separate visa records between 2014 and 2017. Bellingcat confirmed this passport number was associated with the name Christopher O’Brien after discovering both in corporate documents for a now-defunct Hong Kong firm incorporated in February 2014. A man was jailed in 2003 after admitting he supplied fraudulently obtained genuine passports to criminals, including Kinahan. LinkedIn posts from August 2015 showed “Christopher O’Brien” surrounded by Iranian and Turkish businessmen in a high-rise office in Ankara, three days after a short-term UAE visa under that name expired. Those images have since been deleted.
Roy McComb, former deputy director of the UK’s National Crime Agency, put the public interest question plainly. “How is Christy Kinahan in the UAE unlawfully and the authorities there are unwilling to take appropriate action? The Kinahans are not an unknown entity, they are at the very apex of organised crime,” he told The Sunday Times. “For the UAE not to know their residency status beggars belief.”
David Haigh, a British solicitor who was imprisoned on fraud charges in Dubai and now assists abuse victims in the region, went further. “If someone is living openly there for a long period of time with that level of heat, that to me shows there’s been corruption involved,” he said. “If they were using false passports to enter Dubai, that’s a serious federal offence.”
Meanwhile, the legal walls around the cartel’s leadership are closing, if slowly. Daniel Kinahan lost his final appeal in Dubai last week to prevent extradition to Ireland, becoming the second key figure apprehended in the Emirates. Sean McGovern was extradited to Ireland in 2025 and jailed in June.
Employment-based residence visas in the UAE are valid for two years and require a company to apply on the employee’s behalf through the UAE’s Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratization. The employee must also pass a fitness test before the permit is issued. Bellingcat was unable to confirm whether the company names on the permits correspond to genuine operating firms or shell entities. Al Matn Goods Wholesalers and OSA Management Consultancies did not respond to questions. The UAE foreign ministry was approached for comment.
Whether the extradition of Daniel Kinahan signals a genuine shift in how Dubai handles internationally sanctioned figures, or whether others in the network will continue to renew visas and accrue overstay fines without consequence, remains the question citizens in affected countries are entitled to have answered.