Notorious globetrotting gangster James Henry Kinch to be deported from Australia after jail release

A colourful crim likened to an extra from a British gangster movie will enjoy a mere minute of freedom before he is re-detained, deported and barred from ever entering Australia again.

A colourful criminal likened to an extra from a British gangster movie will enjoy a mere minute of freedom before he is re-detained, deported and barred from ever entering Australia again.

James Henry Kinch has spent 16 years in jail after police brought down one of the world’s most powerful drug syndicates that for two decades trafficked multiple tonnes of ecstasy to fuel Australia’s dance clubs and pubs, from Adelaide to Brisbane and all capitals in between.

But on February 10, the dual English-Irish national – known in the Manchester underworld as Jimmy Knuckles – is due for release from Cooma Correctional Centre to enjoy brief freedom before he is re-detained to await deportation to the UK and his home in Portugal.

James Henry Kinch at Bangkok Criminal Court where he fought extradition to Australia, where he was charged with conspiring to import drugs into Australia in 2008.

The inglorious departure of the 65-year-old ends a strange love affair he enjoyed with Australia and its various police services.

In the space of a decade he went from notorious globetrotting criminal mastermind to much feted registered police informant, all the while secretly expanding his global cartel’s ambitions with he and his crew living the high life including renting one of the most expensive apartments in Australia just to run cash counting machines whirring day and night.

Mugshot of James Henry Kinch. Picture: Supplied

Such was the scale of the operation, he stacked a wall of shoe boxes with $10,000 inside each box at his The Quay Apartments flat overlooking Sydney Harbour, that in one run held $1.73 million cash before they were moved to criminal money changers in Melbourne and Sydney to transfer offshore.

“Australia won’t miss Jim, he really was like a character out of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or one of those movies but he and the others were significant players in Australia’s criminal milieu,” a law enforcer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

“He was a conspirator, distributor, and facilitator, across all stages of the trafficking run, who would speak directly with the cartel principals but also the shore party and customers and everyone in between, that would be unusual these days where criminal enterprise is compartmentalised. He always had the ability to move around the globe unassumingly and was not extravagant, just a UK national with the gift of the gab that he used to con cops and crims.”

Part of the Kinch cash haul seized in 2003. Picture: Supplied

Police evidence photo showing a money counting machine, March 2003. Picture: Supplied

Kinch was arrested in a Starbucks in Thailand in 2008, extradited in 2012 and in 2016 sentenced to 22.5 years in prison, with a minimum non-parole of 16 years, after pleading guilty to four charges related to conspiring to import a commercial quantity of drugs or precursors and money laundering.

Police surveillance photo of cartel (left to right) Ronald Haklander, Peter Dekker and James Kinch. Picture: Supplied

His cartel had been shipping ecstasy and precursors all over Europe and to a cartel of Orthodox Jews – “dressed in black with hats, white socks, had beards and curly locks of long hair” according to a police intelligence report – from Miami and San Francisco in the United States.

The American DEA then got close to the Dutch cartel’s route so it switched focus to Australia which was tipped off by more than a dozen police forces in Europe, Asia and the Americas hoping to stop the trade.

In one year alone, Kinch and his cronies, including identities from Manchester and Holland he flew over in 2002, moved more than one metric tonne into the Harbour City worth more than $200 million, for national distribution. It started to unravel after one crim starting using the drugs he was trafficking and the money movements were raising a red flag.

James Kinch after being sentenced at NSW Supreme Court. Picture: News Corp

After his arrest, Kinch was considered more valuable to law enforcement as an informer more than a crim and he was rolled and gave up names, places and storage facilities full of cash and drugs.

But his “handler” was NSW Crime Commission investigator Mark Standen who Kinch eventually turned and the pair together with importer Bill Jalalaty (the husband of a former Australian Federal Police officer) plotted to bring more drugs into Australia for the Dutch cartel via Karachi criminals in Pakistan.

Standen also got 16 years jail and is due for release later this year.

Originally published as Notorious globetrotting gangster James Henry Kinch to be deported from Australia after jail release