Ireland's notorious Kinahan drugs cartel has introduced a fast-food-style franchise system in its efforts to continue dominating the cocaine trade.
The drugs syndicate has muscled its way back to being the dominant force in the Irish cocaine scene in recent months, reasserting itself as the main supplier to almost all major criminal organisations across the country again.
Such is their stranglehold on the trade, that many of the gangs who filled some of the holes left by the mobsters when they fled to Dubai in the mid-2010s to exploit the lack of extradition agreement between the UAE and the EU, are also now back on board.
Representatives from narcotics networks in Dublin and beyond are believed to have travelled to Dubai to meet high-ranking members of the Kinahan cartel to arrange future shipments directly from them.
Those said to have travelled to the Middle East are a Clondalkin gang known as 'The Family' as well as another group who operate from Cabra, who have long been involved in major drug trafficking operations, according to The Times.
