Dapper Don' had been living the high-life on the Costa del Sol in recent months, after getting bail while cops investigate his €500m drug and money laundering empire

Christy Kinahan is back behind bars this week after his multi-million trail of dirty money caught up with him.

The 'Dapper Don' had been living the high-life on the Costa del Sol in recent months, after getting bail while cops investigate his €500m drug and money laundering empire.

But there was a fresh shock in store for Kinahan recently when he was arrested on foot of a warrant to face laundering charges in Belgium.

The Sunday World has learned that the Dapper Don will have to serve a four-year stretch in Belgium.

He had been flashing the cash around the Costa del Sol since his release last year and was living it up with a young lover and his two young children, according to underworld sources.

Along with older sons Daniel and Christopher junior, Kinahan had been regularly spotted wining and dining around Marbella and Puerto Banus, boasting that the family would beat a massive Spanish probe into his crime empire.

Plush

But today he is in custody in a tough Madrid jail. His life in the fast lane came to a crashing halt for the second time in 15 months on July 6 when cops busted him at his plush home in Estepona in southern Spain.

He was brought before Spain's Central Criminal Court on July 8, where he agreed to be extradited on the charges.

However, he has been placed in custody while the magistrate supervising his extradition checks with the judge who is currently overseeing the massive investigation into his suspected €500m drug empire.

A spokesman for the Prosecutor General's Office in Antwerp this week confirmed that extradition proceedings were issued from Belgium to Spanish authorities for Kinahan, relating to a conviction he has there on 10 counts of money laundering.

Belgium's Federal Police had uncovered a massive money laundering racket he was running, involving high-end properties.

The conviction dates back to 2009 but other unfortunate events in the Dapper Don's life have meant that he hasn't found the time to do his stretch.

After the conviction, he had ordered his legal team to appeal the case. While he did so, he moved back to Spain where authorities there moved in on him last summer in a massive dawn raid lifting him, his right hand man John Cunninghan, his sons Daniel and
Christopher Jnr and a host of lawyers, businessmen and thugs who work for him.

He was jailed last December, but was released on bail along with his sons on strict condition that they sign on once a week at a court in Estepona.

In the past few weeks the Belgians have decided that it is time he serve the sentence he was given in their country, while the Spanish investigation continues to trawl through his complex financial web that stretches across the globe.

It is not known if the Spanish will agree to the request now - allowing Kinahan to be transferred to a Belgian jail - or if they will tell a Flemish magistrate that they will only hand him back when they are finished with him.

Their investigation is likely to take at least another year. Kinahan has been trying desperately to keep the wheels on his massive drug-dealing and money-laundering empire rolling.

He has schooled Daniel - his son from Oliver Bond flats, who likes to be known as 'Sir' by his staff at his plush €6m mansion in Spain - in the highly intricate task of running his business, should the worst come to the worst for him.

For years, police could not get a handle on the intricate wranglings of Kinahan's business, but then Irish cops got a break following a last-minute tip-off that his son Christopher Jnr was getting married in 2007 to his fiancée Georgina Corish from Rialto.

Wedding

Undercover gardai put the wedding party under surveillance and the intelligence they gathered gave them an insight into his associates and his mobile phone network.

In May 2008, following a secret investigation by the Belgian Federal Police he was arrested. There he had set up a real estate company in Antwerp, Europe's diamond capital, with his Dutch business partner, Cornelius Fuchs.

The gangster had bought a former casino and gaming hall at Kaasrui 11 in the heart of Antwerp's old city. At the time Kinahan gave his address as Pernera in Cyprus.

The company planned to convert the casino into plush apartments and also bought two other properties in an exclusive area called Brasschaat, near Antwerp, which is known as 'billionaires row'.

When the properties were seized, an extraordinary web of corruption was also laid bare showing how Kinahan had paid-off police and used a sports club to launder cash.

He was handed a four-year sentence after he was found guilty on 10 counts of money laundering.

During his trial the judge accused the gangster of refusing to clarify where the money had come from, who owned it and what was his relationship with a string of offshore companies.

He said Kinahan had been in prison for a 'large portion of his life' and described how he is connected to several 'of the biggest players' in international organised crime.