Latin American Herald Tribune - Reputed International Crime Boss Arrested in Spain

Latin American Herald Tribune - Reputed International Crime Boss Arrested in Spain: "32 people, including reputed gangster Christopher “Christy” Kinahan, were arrested Tuesday at a number of places around Europe in an international operation targeting a European drug- and arms-trafficking ring operating out of London, Dublin and southern Spain’s Costa del Sol.

That was announced Tuesday by Britain’s Serious Organized Crime Agency, which told Efe that Kinahan, an Irish-born British citizen, was arrested at his mansion on the Costa del Sol.

Kinahan, 53, was arrested by the Spanish National Police together with several members of his family, a number of British and Irish citizens and four Spanish attorneys, SOCA said.

Twenty people were arrested in Spain and another 12 in Britain, in a joint operation that included the the participation of Europol and 750 police agents from different countries, who also carried out house searches in Ireland, Belgium, Cyprus and Brazil.

The target was a crime ring suspected of trafficking large amounts of drugs and weapons, and of laundering huge sums of money acquired through its criminal activities, SOCA said.

In a statement to Efe in Warsaw, where he was attending a conference on the occasion of The European Day for Border Guards, Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said that Kinahan’s organization is connected to several murders and crimes from drug running to people trafficking."