EXPLODING in the midst of top flight boxing like a hand grenade was the announcement by British, US and Irish authorities at a joint press conference in Dublin on April 12 that severe financial sanctions had been imposed by the US Treasury against leading members of the “Kinahan Organised Crime Group” (KOCG), along with the offer of a $15 million (£11.4m) bounty for information leading to the arrest or conviction of its alleged leading members — Daniel, Christy Jr, and Christy Sr Kinahan.

With this development, boxing no longer has anywhere to hide, and it will almost certainly overshadow and hang over the upcoming domestic WBC heavyweight clash at Wembley on April 23 between current WBC champion Tyson Fury — who counts Kinahan as a close friend and personal adviser — and Dillian Whyte.

For years now the sport’s movers and shakers, many of its fighters and broadcasters, have essentially been riding shotgun for Daniel Kinahan and his attempt, now failed, to sportwash his reputation while inveigling himself as a power broker within boxing to the point of becoming one of its most influential figures.

Many in boxing will have been plunged into a vortex of uncertainty and fear over the ramifications of this extraordinary demarche on the part of multiple law enforcement and government agencies in what amounts to a transnational operation to take down a transnational drugs cartel that is also implicated in gun running and money laundering on a vast scale — amassing in the process, according to investigators, $1 billion (£765m).

The flurry of hastily deleted tweets and Instagram posts by various fighters and others in response to this astonishing news has been revelatory.

While nobody in boxing currently or previously associated with Daniel Kinahan — alleged by US and Irish authorities to be hands on in the day-to-day running of his criminal organisation’s activities from his base in Dubai — has been accused of being involved in any criminal activity themselves, there is no arguing that boxing as a whole now has some serious questions to answer.

Daniel Kinahan — co-founder of what morphed from MGM Marbella in 2012 into MGM Global in 2017, but with whom both he and the company have since claimed he is no longer associated — has been on the radar of the Irish authorities since the Hutch-Kinahan feud erupted into international news headlines with the Dublin Regency Hotel assault on February 5 2016.

At the boxing weigh-in being held there that day, five gunmen — three of them dressed in police uniforms and one in drag — attempted to assassinate Kinahan, who was in attendance.

It is thought that the Hutch gang, led by Gerry Hutch, wanted to kill Kinahan over his alleged ordering of the murder of his nephew, Gary Hutch, in Spain back in 2015.

The key point is that all of the above history has been left unexplored over the years within the closed world of boxing. Not one prominent boxing journalist has asked anything more than softball questions with respect to Daniel Kinahan’s alleged links to major organised crime, up to and including murder, nor covered it in any depth.

Major promoters such as Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren in Britain, and Bob Arum in the US, have either previously denied having any knowledge of any such alleged criminal background, or in Arum’s case going so far as to vouch for and endorse Kinahan’s role in boxing in the face of such.

Speaking of Arum, in light of recent events he had done a very convenient and immediate 180 — forcefully stating that due to the US government’s move against Kinahan, Top Rank will no longer deal with him.

“We’re a United States company,” the 90-year-old made clear. “Our government has made this determination [about Kinahan]. We’re gonna follow our government. Period. End of story.”

Arum has also indicated that Top Rank may extend this shift in stance to future dealings with MTK Global, which as mentioned was originally co-founded by Daniel Kinahan in 2012 but with whom he and the company have since claimed they are longer involved.

There are some who regard this particular claim with scepticism, it should be said, and if Arum and Top Rank do go down this road it could well prove a game-changer.

MTK Global currently has a roster of around 300 fighters on its books, among them Tyson Fury, Jack Catterall, Michael Conlan, Savannah Marshall, Vergil Ortiz Jr, and Liam Smith, and it should come as no surprise over the coming weeks if some of those try to break free and distance themselves.

Speaking at the Dublin press conference on April 12, Gardai Police Commissioner Drew Harris had a message for boxing: “If you deal with these individuals who have been sanctioned, or these entities who are being sanctioned, you are involved in a criminal network,” he stated.

In response to a question from a member of the press, Harris also had a strong message for the sport’s major broadcasters — namely BT Sport, Sky Sports, Talksport, BBC, DAZN, and ESPN: “I’d ask them to look at their own business, at the probity of their own business and the relationship with their fans and, really, is this something they want to be involved with in terms of their legitimate business? I think the answer to that is a resounding no.”

Whatever happens going forward, boxing will now come under the kind of scrutiny it has traditionally managed to avoid. It amplifies the case for the establishment of an international governing body, along the lines of Fifa, to provide oversight and enforce rules governing the sport in every part of the world.

In the meantime, there must surely now be the swift requirement that so-called personal advisers — hitherto able to function without any regulation or background check — be licensed and mandated to pass a fit and proper person’s test before being allowed to operate.

The alternative is an awaiting swamp, involving boxing’s demise as a sport and its reincarnation as a gangster’s paradise.