Tito and Dino bandleader Edin Gačanin is the latest guest at Kinahan’s wedding to be arrested.
The Bosnian is wanted by authorities in the Netherlands, where other Kinahan guests and members of the cartel are now also on trial for drug trafficking and murder.
The 40-year-old Sarajevo native who also holds a Dutch passport has been named in Dutch and Bosnian media as one of the 49 people arrested.
The cartel, in which the Kinahans play a key role, is suspected of importing at least a third of the cocaine that reaches Europe.
Europol today announced details of the police operation, which took place earlier this month and involved four EU countries along with the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
Tito and Dino bandleader Edin Gačanin is the latest guest at Kinahan’s wedding to be arrested.
Ridouan Taghi is on trial for gang-related charges including murder and drug trafficking in the Netherlands after being previously extradited from Dubai.
Naoufal Fassih is also serving a long sentence there after being convicted of a number of crimes, including attempted murder.
Raffaele Imperiale, considered one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers, was arrested last year at his home in Dubai and transferred to Rome in March to face charges.
Ricardo ‘El Rico’ Riquelme Vega, a Dutch-Chilean trafficker and one of Daniel Kinahan’s criminal contacts received an 11-year sentence last year.
Christy Kinahan sr and his two sons, Daniel and Christopher jr, have been sanctioned by the United States and given a reward of 5 million dollars.
Details of the operation emerged today with authorities in the Netherlands and Spain reporting their roles.
Spain’s Civil Guard carried out raids on November 8 in Malaga, Madrid and Barcelona that resulted in the arrest of 15 people, including three “high value targets”.
They said the operation began with the seizure, by the Civil Guard, of a container in the Port of Valencia in March 2020, through which they intended to introduce 698 kg of cocaine from Panama.
He uncovered a smuggling network through the ports of Barcelona, Valencia and Algeciras, as well as a complex corporate network of real estate investments in the Costa del Sol area to launder the profits.
“It has been possible to identify the leader of this organization, a British citizen linked to the Costa del Sol and who had to leave Spain due to an attempted kidnapping against him, moving to Dubai, a place from where continued to direct and coordinate the organization’s criminal activities.”
They also said the supplier of the drug was identified as a Panamanian citizen also residing in Dubai, who arranged shipments from the port of Manzanillo in Panama.
The criminal network had two separate structures, one to get the cocaine to Europe and the other to launder the cash.
Today, Dutch prosecutors said a suspect arrested in Dubai is a 40-year-old Dutch man who is also a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He became a police target after a series of encrypted Sky messages were intercepted.
“The man is not only suspected of importing large quantities of cocaine. It is also suspected that he organized the importation of almost 8,000 kilos of raw materials for the production of amphetamine”.
“The raw materials for drug production came through the port of Antwerp with a company in the Netherlands as the final destination.
According to the Dutch authorities, this man “probably played an important role in the importation of the prohibited goods”.
“This includes a consignment of approximately 1,800 kilograms of cocaine that was imported through the port of Hamburg in 2020 bound for the Netherlands.”