Kinahan has previously been represented by the British law firm Brandsmiths in defamation cases. Adam Morallee, a partner at Brandsmiths, said in an email that he had “reached out for instructions” but had not yet heard from Kinahan. Kinahan’s lawyers in the United States did not respond to an email requesting comment on the sanctions.
At a news conference in Dublin, Greg Gatjanis, an associate director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, compared the Kinahan group to the Camorra in Italy, the yakuza in Japan and Los Zetas in Mexico.
Outside Ireland, however, Daniel Kinahan, 44, is best known for his deep influence in boxing. In 2012, he founded MTK Global, a boxing and mixed martial arts company that represents top British boxers like Fury, Billy Joe Saunders and Michael Conlan.
MTK Global, which was not subject to sanctions by the U.S. government, said it cut ties with Kinahan after a shooting in 2016 at the Regency Hotel in Dublin at the weigh-in for a planned boxing match between Jamie Kavanagh and Antonio João Bento. According to reports in the Irish news media, Kinahan is believed to have been the target of the shooting, which killed a Kinahan associate.
John O’Driscoll, an assistant commissioner for the Irish national police service, said the shooting was a pivotal moment that led the police to stop thinking of the Kinahans as a “group of criminals located and engaged in crime in Dublin” and start thinking of them as “being a transnational organized crime group possessed of significant wealth.”