Frank Warren and Tyson Fury 'knew nothing' of Bob Arum's $4m payment to Daniel Kinahan

Arum, who founded Top Rank promotion company in Las Vegas, said he had paid Kinahan more than $1 million for each of Fury’s four bouts against Tom Schwarz, Otto Wallin, and Deontay Wilder twice from 2019 to 2021.

The veteran promoter told Yahoo Sports that he’d paid Kinahan, who is now subject to massive sanctions imposed by the US government, “at least a million” in consulting fees for each of the bouts.

However, Fury’s worldwide promoter, Frank Warren of Queensberry Promotions, has said that the Gypsy King was “unaware” of the transactions.

“I certainly knew and Tyson certainly knew nothing about the payments made by Top Rank to the company in the Middle East,” he told BBC Radio 5’s Live boxing podcast on Monday.

“That’s their business. It’s nothing to do with us. It’s certainly nothing to do with me and Tyson was unaware of it. That’s something for Top Rank to sort out because it was them that made the payment and it was their arrangement.”

When asked about Kinahan’s role in Fury’s upcoming fight against Dillian Whyte this Saturday, Warren said: “He has no involvement in this fight nor did he try to get involved this fight because Queensberry won the purse bid and even if we hadn't won it, he wouldn't have been involved.”

Kinahan was a co-founder of the MTK Global boxing agency, which represents a number of the sport’s leading fighters, including Fury. However, both MTK and Kinahan claim that Kinahan has not been involved with the company since February 2017.

Last week, the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a press release in which it detailed sanctions against Kinahan, his father Christopher Snr and brother Christopher Jnr and other members of the “Kinahan Organized Crime Group (KOCG) for their criminal activities.”

Authorities issued a $5million bounty for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the three most senior members of the cartel group and noted that KOCG smuggles narcotics to Europe, launders money and commits murders as part of its criminal enterprise.

A few days later, Dublin boxer Jono Carroll became the first boxer to publicly back Kinahan.

Taking to social media the 30-year-old reshared an old tweet praising the drug lord and said: “Mother f**kers can say what yous (sic) want, this man gave me opportunity’s (sic) in this sport and without him I would of (sic) walked away a long time ago, I stand by everything I said here, I’ll always be thankful for his help and guidance in this sport.”

The tweet he was referring to from February 2022 said: “Without this man I wouldn't be still in this boxing game, he's a true legend of the sport.

“He should be celebrated from the boxing world, without him half of these big fights would never of happened, #facts #real #talk.”