The head of an organised crime gang who admitted supplying fraudulently obtained genuine passports (FOGs) to major criminals including the head of the Kinahan organised crime gang has been jailed for six years in the UK.
61-year-old Anthony Beard from Sydenham in London led the gang with another man, 67-year-old Christopher Zietek who spent time in Ireland and was jailed for three years today.
Beard admitted supplying over 70 such passports to criminals all over the world including to Christy Kinahan Senior.
A convicted drug dealer, Kinahan Senior is also wanted in Spain to face two charges in relation to alleged passport fraud.
Prosecutors claim in an indictment that Kinahan Senior used a British passport in the name of Michael Leslie Swift to board an Iberia airlines flight IB6205 to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil on 29 April 2010.
The five-page indictment states "he also used the same false identity to reserve the ticket and the boarding card".
It also says that an Irish passport in the name of a man who died in Ireland on 23 March 2002 was found and that "in that passport the photograph of Christopher Kinahan Senior had been inserted after he allegedly provided his own photo for the confection of this passport".
The UK National Crime Agency said the passports sold by the gang led by Beard and Zietek enabled drug traffickers and murderers cross international borders undetected and evade justice in the UK.
Customers paid between £5,000 and £20,000 for the highly sought after documents, which were issued authentically but applied for using false information.
The gang exploited vulnerable people - often with alcohol or drug problems - who were around the same age as their criminal clients and with similar facial features.
They were paid for providing their expired passports, and their details were used to apply for new ones but with photographs of the criminals.
The gang also paid others to counter-sign passport applications.
Beard was an expert in FOGs and NCA officers believe he had been procuring them for 20 years.
He was involved in every aspect of organising and applying for the passports, including collecting application forms and planning the details to be provided by the applicant and the counter-signatory.
His fingerprints were found on many of the forms and contact numbers he included were for numerous 'burner' phones he operated.
Christopher Zietek was formerly known as Christopher McCormack and was believed to be an enforcer for the Adams crime family in London. He split his time between Ireland, London and Spain and was jailed for three years today.
A third member of the crime gang, 72-year-old Alan Thompson, from Sutton, in Surrey, worked for Zietek doing everything from chauffeuring him to criminal meetings to performing necessary tasks for the brokering of FOG passports. This included meeting Beard when Zietek was abroad.
He was sentenced to three years today.
Christy Kinahan's two sons, who are also wanted by the US authorities, have also been found to have acquired false passports.
In a similar scam here, Daniel Kinahan also secured a false passport in the name of a drug addict in Dundalk who pleaded guilty to the offence at Dundalk Circuit Court, while Christopher Kinahan Junior has been caught using a false passport in Germany.
