Miles Johnson

Companies linked to a Russian spy ring have resumed buying machinery from a German toolmaker — just months after the manufacturer was warned about sales to the same smuggling network. Analysis by the Financial Times has established that Heller Tools, a Dinklage-based group founded in the 19th century, sold a total of $1.2mn of drills and other tools to companies linked to the so-called Serniya smuggling operation. According to the US Department of Justice, the Serniya network was set up under…

On the morning of March 29 2022, Captain Guy Booth was working aboard Phi, a 192ft aquamarine superyacht moored in London’s Canary Wharf, when he heard a commotion below. Down on the pier a car had pulled up and Grant Shapps, then the UK’s transport secretary, emerged from the vehicle, followed by a retinue of aides. “The first thing we saw was his entourage, several men and women carrying clipboards and make-up and hairbrushes,” says Booth. Shapps and his team then began to shoot a video for…

(noun) The attempt by Putin’s former lieutenant to vanquish his old boss The accepted wisdom in the first year of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was that, so tight was the Russian president’s grip on power, no member of the country’s elite would dare challenge him. That held until June this year, when catering magnate turned brutal mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin staged the biggest insurrection of the Putin era. Over the first half of the year, Prigozhin and his Wagner fighters had beco…

This is an audio transcript of Hot Money podcast Episode 8: The Red Notebook Miles JohnsonPreviously on Hot Money. The pressure on Daniel Kinahan is rising. His partners in the Dubai super cartel are starting to fall. And police around the world are working on a secret plan to take him down for good. It’s the morning of April 12th, 2022 and reporters and TV crews arrive at a press conference in Dublin that’s been called by the Irish police. Officially, there’ll be an update on how law enforcem…

This is an audio transcript of Hot Money podcast Episode 5: Nerds vs Narcos Miles JohnsonPreviously on Hot Money. We discovered how Dubai became the perfect place for the Super Cartel to come together. This time I want to take you back to Dublin. To Lower Baggot Street, it’s a smart neighborhood, close to the city centre, filled with grand Georgian houses. It’s April 2016. And Irish detectives have received a tip off. One of the apartments on the street is a Kinahan cartel safehouse. But when…

This is an audio transcript of Hot Money podcast Episode 3: Sun, guns and sangria Miles JohnsonPreviously on Hot Money . . . Christy Kinahan used an exploding European drug market to grow a tiny Dublin heroin hustle into a cocaine empire operating across the continent. In this episode, we learn about a big shift in his criminal strategy. It’s a turning point that tells us something new about the evolution of international organised crime. And it happens on the Costa Del Sol. [MUSIC PLAYING]…

This is an audio transcript of Hot Money podcast Episode 2: Cocaine CEO Miles JohnsonPreviously on Hot Money. I started looking into a murder in a small Dutch town. The murder of a man who was living a secret life, on the run from the Iranian regime. And it’s taken me to Ireland to a safe house owned by the Kinahans the family at the heart of Europe’s most powerful cocaine cartel. But who are the Kinahans? And why would drug traffickers be connected to what looks like a political assassination.…

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication