A fake tanning tycoon who was an associate of one of the world’s most wanted men is opening a private health centre in Scotland’s biggest city. Sandra Vaughan worked with gangster Daniel Kinahan but is now putting a major investment behind Glasgow’s Sur Wellness, which she claims will offer plastic surgery to rival the famous Harley Street in London.
It’s the 54-year-old’s return to the business world after she quit as CEO of boxing promotions firm MTK Global in July 2020 – a company previously run by Kinahan, who last year had a $5million bounty put on his head by the US authorities. Members of his Dubai-based Irish family are wanted over crimes including murder, firearms and drug trafficking.
Concerns have already been raised about the Kinahans’ influence in Scotland after the Sunday Mail revealed last May how they had links to a Scottish firm called Kynoch Boxing Promotions and Management, which has run a series of fights across the country. Millionaire businesswoman Vaughan came to prominence when she paid £10million in 2008 to buy out the worldwide Fake Bake business, a spray-tan which has been used by a host of celebrities.
But her involvement in the firm – under her maiden name of Sandra McClumpha – came to an end when her company, Fake Bake UK, plunged into liquidation in 2013. Sur Wellness is being launched this year at a converted townhouse at West Regent Street in Glasgow’s city centre over three floors of the building which are owned by Vaughan.
Marketing for the site describes it as “Glasgow’s luxury health and wellness centre” and will include private GP clinics, plastic surgery treatments and a training academy. It will be run by aesthetic nurse practitioner Karen Addison, 42, who is a director of the new company behind it, Sur Wellness Ltd, along with Vaughan and another of her long-term business associates, Ronan Cruise, 57, who worked on her Fake Bake empire.
Asked about Vaughan’s new venture and the links with Kinahan, Addison said: “I’m fully aware of Sandra’s background – she’s a respectable businesswoman with no links to this person you are talking about.” Addison also runs a smaller sister site called Sur Medispa based in Uddingston and is the sole director of the company which runs it, called Sur Medispa Ltd, set up in 2016.
There’s no suggestion that Addison or Cruise have any links to Kinahan. It’s understood hundreds of thousands of pounds have been invested in the new Glasgow site to turn it into a state-of-the-art private health centre.
Vaughan promoted the site herself in a rare Facebook post last November, stating: “West Regent Street is the new Harley Street @surwellness bringing you the top surgeons to Glasgow.” A source said: “Sandra is excited about this new venture and was keen to get back into the health beauty industry and move on from the links to the Kinahans, which have caused her a lot of problems.”
In October 2017 Vaughan was appointed CEO of MTK Global, which had previously been co-founded by Daniel Kinahan in 2012. He’d stepped down from the business in 2017 – before Vaughan took control – after an incident in 2016 when he was targeted by a gunman who burst into a Dublin hotel where a boxing event was taking place. He fled but an associate was shot dead.
Despite him stepping away from MTK, leaked documents from Dubai last May showed how Kinahan was the owner of an office complex where MTK was registered to in the UAE. Those records also showed the same office space was rented to a consultancy called Ducashew, of which Vaughan was a director. It has also been sanctioned by the US Government.
In March last year a picture was tweeted by Pakistan’s sports and youth affairs minister Rai Taimoor Khan Bhatti which showed his meeting in Dubai with Vaughan and Kinahan. He said he’d met boxing firm Probellum “on how to make this sport bigger for our youth”. Probellum has denied ties to Kinahan. Bhatti added: “Looking forward to hosting Daniel in Lahore to discuss Pakistan’s first international fight with foreign boxers.”
It came just before a $5million bounty was put on Kinahan’s head by authorities in the US. In 2020 Vaughan told how MTK was able to sign up boxer Tyson Fury thanks to Kinahan’s contacts. She told boxing channel IFLTV: “The reason we got Tyson is he was recommended to us by Daniel, which I’m totally grateful for.”
Tyson Fury has no connections to organised crime. That interview came weeks before she stepped down from her role as CEO of MTK in July 2020 to “focus energies in other areas”.
Last night Scottish Conservative shadow community safety minister Russell Findlay, who has led calls for the Scottish authorities to look at the Kinahans, said: “The Kinahan cartel has extensive connections with Scottish drugs gangs, front business and boxing. These parasites flaunt vast wealth gained by preying on our drug-ravaged communities and killing the most vulnerable people in society.
“A dirty thread of drugs money runs from Dublin to Dubai via Glasgow and I’d call on the Scottish Government to do everything possible to work with our international law enforcement partners to ensure Scotland becomes hostile territory to organised crime.” It’s understood concerns about the Kinahans’ influence have been raised with the National Crime Agency, Scottish Government and police.
The Scottish Government has said a Serious Organised Crime Taskforce has been set up to look at criminals such as the Kinahans. Vaughan’s links to the Kinahans also come through her ex-partner and dad of her two children, Kevin Kelly, and her husband Danny Vaughan.
Kelly previously fronted a Marbella-based building firm with Kinahan and was linked with them until 2012, when he was said to have fallen out with them and later kidnapped and tortured over missing cash. Vaughan and Kelly split in 2005 but in 2010 her £1million home in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, was raided by the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
Vaughan has never been charged with anything and it was thought the searches were due to Kelly’s activities. Last April a picture emerged showing Vaughan’s husband Danny, 51, who was a head coach at MTK Global, with senior members of the Kinahan crime cartel.
Attempts were made to contact Sandra Vaughan for comment but no reply was received and nobody was available at her home in Uddingston yesterday. Kinahan has previously denied being part of a criminal gang.
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