Episode 181: How Dubai became the new Costa del Crime for the world's gangsters

And when a super cartel of the biggest cocaine traffickers sat down to do business at Daniel Kinahan's 2017 wedding at the seven-star Burj Al Arab hotel they couldn’t have felt safer.

But arrests, deportations and sanctions have followed - with two now in prison and two left behind, trapped in their own luxury prisons.

So how did Dubai become the new Costa Del Crime and how committed are police and rulers in the United Arab Emirates to handing back the crooks?

Nicola Tallant talks with author and journalist Carl Fellstrom, who details the ancient Hawala money laundering system that has made crime easy, about the British drug trafficker who led the way to the Gulf at the turn of the century, and about the A-list traffickers - including the Kinahan mob - who followed to the cash-rich desert paradise.

MORE EPISODES –