Narco busts, CEE gangs and... Turkey

Witam, dzien dobry, ahoj and good on you.

Hej, it pays to start the day right prior to delving into crime (and grime), and (as noted in yesterday’s blog), we have a bit of catching up to do. That said, your favourite consulting detective in CEE (I hope) will still keep it a bit light. Catching up is like that.

Which means… let’s talk narco trafficking and organized crime before we jump into regional stories to watch (hopefully later this week).

Bananas…

First, we have harped upon again and again the risk of drugs in fruit (and grain) shipments. And it seems that Yours Truly was not off the mark, as a recent Europol report cited in The Guardian noted the preponderance of cocaine shipments in… bananas.

This includes 2,700 kilos of cocaine seized in one shipment in bananas in 2023 in Italy, 17,600 pounds of cocaine found in Rotterdam and a record 12,500 pounds of cocaine found in bananas in the UK in February of this year—estimated by the BBC to have been worth GBP 450 mln.

And yet the cocaine just keeps slipping through—as evidenced by a June 20 bust of a Polish gang that saw eight arrested (to bring the Polish arrest total to 42) of a gang that has long brought in narcotics via semi trucks from Spain, Germany, but also had an “area of operations” that included Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Poland. That gang gang “could have introduced over 2.2 tonnes of marijuana with a black market value of over PLN 137 mln, over 8.7 tonness of hashish worth nearly PLN 350 mln, and 942 kg of cocaine worth over PLN 282 mln, with the total value of all drugs is almost PLN 770 million.

Which on any scale is quite a filter down.

Interpol and the Spaniards…

And June was also another big international narco-bust month, and Europol, Interpol and Spain played their various roles. And once again, we have to hand it to Spain—they are serious about clamping down on organized crime, and not only, as remember they also in the past went after and arrested (and they almost stand alone in this regard) various Russian mobsters, ranging from Tambovskaya and Maleshevskaya players to even pointing fingers at national Russian politicians long before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Granted, this was a bit all for naught, but hey, at least they were trying.

And they are definitely still trying when it comes to narcotics trafficking and cocaine.

In mid-June Europol noted that a major Balkan cartel was shut down with arrests of “around 40 people), following “a years-long operation to bust a major drug smuggling ring, leading to the seizure of eight tons of cocaine.” Europol also cited Esteban Remacha, Oscar Esteban Remacha, head of the anti-drug trafficking unit at Spain's Guardia Civil, who stated that the gang had "the capacity to transport tons and tons of cocaine all over the world.”

Interesting is that the cartel’s leaders were based (again) in Turkey and Dubai, and although details have remained scant, one theory is that (again, thanks to the Sky ECC encryption breakthrough that Yours Truly has referred to in the past) that members or cohorts were linked to the Gacanin Tito and Dino gang, which was known to have worked in the past together in a “super cartel,” as described by the US DEA that included Camorra, the Mocro Mafia and the Kinahan gang. This cartel and its various offshoots has taken hit after hit, with key Kinahan member son the lamb and Tito and Dino co-leader Edin Gacanin said to have cut a deal with Dutch prosecutors in 2023 that will see him serve seven years in prison. Likewise, the (allegedly) murderous Ridouan Tagh and leader of the Mocro mafia has now been convicted of a long string of crimes in Marengo proceedings.

But that’s how it is in crime. When the kingdom comes down, the dominoes just keep falling.

And if you want to watch the busts, there is a Europol video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dR77qbBRjU&t=534s

Ah, you mean not that gang?

But wait…

Hold the phones.

Perhaps this is yet ANOTHER Balkan cartel.

In fact, there are plenty of cartels (and we’ll get to that momentarily), but interesting is a Croatian angle, as officials cited two “top Croat members” who were previously arrested in Istanbul.

This would likely mean a gang headed by Nenad P.

Nenad P. was a Croatian drug lord based out of Turkey also wanted for murder.

And you can check out his arrest here: https://www.newsflare.com/video/608195/croatian-drug-lord-nenad-petrak-captured-in-raid-on-hideout-in-istanbul-turkey

In fact, yes, the Royal We will admit it. The above was a bit of a fake (no, not related to Tito and Dino, as far as we know) to make a point in that 1) there are so many gangs at this point in time that it is quite difficult even for the CDDI team to keep them straight. And 2) Turkey again has come up on the radar as a haven for… narco kings and gang leaders. And 3) there are just…

So many gangs.

But first let’s talk Turkey. The Nenad P. bust is a bit of an outlier (only maybe it isn’t) in that this is a country that seemingly since the arrival of President Recep Erdogan Turkey either does not vet those with money to any degree whatsoever… or something else has long been at play. Interpol red notices seem to have no impact, and neither do arrest warrants from other countries.

Gang leaders or drug traffickers known to have obtained passports or at least hidden in Turkey in recent years include Polish drug trafficker Thomas/Tomasz Josef K.; Bosnian drug trafficker Sani Al M.; Serbia’s Jovan V.; Albanian drug trafficker Flmur S.; the now dead Nadir Salfov a.k.a. “Guli”; Swedish-Serbian Maximillian R.; Dutch cocaine trafficker Jos L; New Zealand trafficker Duax N.; Turkish-Australian Joseph A.; Kurdish trafficker Rawa M. and others.

Like more than 350 others.

Yet the Turkish drug-trafficker haven has become less accommodating ever since Turkey was placed on the European Financial Action Taks Force’s (FATF grey list in 2021 and the arrival of Interior Minister Ali Yelrikaya who finally said enough is enough.

But picking on just Turkey would be somewhat misleading (as would also be lauding that country for recent arrests), as even on June 2 Europol announced the dismantling of yet another European/international gang, with 13 individuals arrested by Italian Carabinieri during operations that saw law enforcement authorities in Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium and Ukraine raid 13 properties. And according to Europol, “as a result, seven suspects were arrested in Italy, three in Spain, one in Belgium, one in Germany and one in Ukraine,” with the agency adding that the individuals would likely also be charged with money laundering.

Europol added that “the criminal network was composed of individuals of multiple nationalities, including Italians, Spaniards, Argentineans and Colombians, who worked together to carry out their criminal deeds”--with the agency adding that large quantities of hashish were being shipped into Spain. Europol also stated that one subject escaped to Ukraine by car where he hid for several months only to be arrested on July 2.

And yet the drugs (chiefly cocaine) just keeps on coming, with the agency having identified now 821 “particularly threatening” crime networks in the EU.

Which is a lot of gangs and a lot of threats.

Enough to drive a good cop…

No. Won’t say it.

But yeah, it starts with a “b.”

Photo credit: Guardia Civil/Dubai authorities in action, courtesy of Europol.

Preston Smith, the author of this blog, is a licensed detective and former investigative journalist who for the last decade has worked for both local and European/regional risk intelligence agencies. For pre-transaction due diligence, litigation support, political analysis and more, feel free to contact him at cddi.pl through the query@cddi.pl contact mail.