Nicola Tallant: ‘Call me a cynic, but news from Dubai is coming at a perfect time for Drew Harris’

So why then, amidst a crises for Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, is he suggesting that police from Dubai are coming to Ireland, due to his intervention at the highest level, to help the Garda investigation?

As an aside from the facts, common sense would indicate that it would be far more helpful for Gardai to go to Dubai to help their counterparts in the country that the Kinahans have been living and operating in for the past seven or more years.

Call me a cynic but it looks like there is a little bit of spin going on here when it comes to the one story that will always be sure to make the headline.

Even at a time that Commissioner Harris has made history after an overwhelming vote of no confidence in him at a ballot by the Garda Representative Association he has come out smelling of roses and appearing to be the only one that can step in and sort the Emirates one way or another.

Hats off for that.

But Commissioner Harris is the ultimate politician who knows that if he operates with full support of the government, the opinions of rank and file don’t matter.

What he is not is an investigator and, while he can spin the headlines, scratch beneath the surface and he exposes himself as a naive crime fighter.

There are other facts too that don’t stack up around his journey to Dubai in recent weeks to build bridges with police there.

Apart from the inconsistencies around the Kinahan investigation here, there is also the blinding fact that the UAE have not picked up Sean McGovern 18 months since they were told a European Arrest Warrant has been issued and that he is wanted here on murder charges.

McGovern, named during the announcement of US sanctions on the Kinahan organisation and its key inner circle, is accused of murdering Noel ‘Duck Egg’ Kirwan.

Kirwan knew members of the Hutch family and stood next to Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch at the funeral of his brother Eddie in February 2016, the month the murderous Kinahan Hutch feud kicked off.

It was his presence as a mourner that sealed his death and just days before Christmas that year, Kinahan hitmen moved in on him as he sat with his partner in the driveway of his home. He was riddled with bullets and died in her arms.

McGovern who was based in Dublin had taken command of the intricacies of the murder and is understood to have directed others to kill him. Within weeks he was gone and pitched up in Dubai at Kinahan’s side moving his family out to join him.

McGovern is Daniel Kinahan’s closest associate and between them they chose who would live and who would die as they waged their bloody revenge from their Gulf paradise.

If Commissioner Drew Harris had a successful visit to Dubai in recent weeks he would have asked why police there have not picked him up and sent him on a plane home.

McGovern continues to live openly in the millionaire’s paradise; he goes to bars, restaurants and is regularly spotted in the same hangouts the Kinahan’s have frequented for years.

The lack of movement and co-operation by authorities in the United Arab Emirates tells us just where we rank in importance to them.

However all is not lost.

While Commissioner Harris has been working behind the scenes and claiming personal hurt for the vote of no confidence against him, his cohorts in the Emirates are spinning too because they are intent on making the world feel they are cleaning up their act when it comes to Dubai being a haven for money laundering.

In March 2022 the Financial Action Task Force placed the UAE on its grey list. This is summer the FATF said that the country is improving and that it is getting closer in line with international expectations.

But the UAE has a lot to do around money laundering and counter terrorist financing before the next review in April or May of 2024.

It is desperate to come off the list and is no doubt coming up with all sorts of ways of showing international co-operation and extending the hand of friendship into Europe as a result.

With the DPP consideration of the Kinahan file expected to take 6 months and bring any decision into the spring of 2024 and with the Emirates hopeful of passing the tasks set for them by the FATF, the wind of change could finally turn and a sliding doors moment could ultimately give the Kinahan leadership a stark lesson in the fact that nobody is above politics