Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Organized crime can hold sway over political and economic institutions. Illegal business is growing more profitable every day. Can something be done to take down this global criminal network?
Corruption and drug trafficking are no longer just local problems. International groups working with terrorist organizations and politicians are ruthlessly spreading violence and endangering innocent lives. Complex infrastructures enable them to evade capture and punishment.
Drug smuggling is a competitive global business. Drug smugglers transport their goods from Latin America to Europe. From international money laundering to transnational murder for hire, we see the devastation underground business leaves in its wake. Murders, explosions, and targeted attacks – they affect not only criminals, but also their families, witnesses, journalists, and other innocent victims.
According to FBI and Europol documents, every country on earth now has its own criminal groups and cartels. They are also gaining a stronger footing in Germany. Take drug trafficking, for example: Germany is a well-organized market and central transport hub for opiates along the Balkan route. South America directly serves the U.S. market. Anyone attempting to expose these groups is placing her or his life on the line.
According figures from the World Bank, organized crime groups spend half of their annual two trillion dollar annual profits bribing politicians across the globe. Those operating with full cooperation from the authorities are behaving more like terror organizations: They use fear and terror, murder and manslaughter. But using the global financial system for money laundering is nothing new. The state earns money through taxes and terror groups get rich in the process.
Drugs and money are not the only things being transported. Smuggling people has also become a lucrative business for organized crime, bringing in about $150 billion each year.
Could conditions like those in Russia develop elsewhere, where politicians, secret services and criminals share common interests? Could this even happen in once stable democracies like the USA or core European states? Is there a way out? Or are law enforcement agencies powerless to stop them?
in october 2018 , chief prosecutor wolfgang zöllner was preparing to crack down on organized crime in hamburg he wants to destroy the marijuana distrubition network
it was the day of the hamburg derby game -hamburge versus st . paulie.
the football match would take up too much attention, so ther arrest of the bookies was postponed. supervision is continuously carried out .
under surveillance ,the suspects rented a white van
the van drove to the port terminal, some men came out , they were interested in one particular container.hoe did the man get such accurate information?
we know dock workers are paid five- figure sums for this . because it is useless if a container with traded goods is on top of two other containers and no one can reach it .
when a truck picked up the container ,the suspects followed in their white van . equipped like a police van. they have handvudds . they have police equipment .
like blue lights and signal batons to flag someone down.
investigators followed the truck and the van,south of hamburd they both turned and drove back towards the city . the police are trying to find outthe reason.
they decided that a driver swap appeared to have occurred.it caused quite a stir among investigators
the truck is believed to have benn hijacked. a police helicopter tracked the convoy back to the port where the trucks werre emptied.
a mobile unit arrested several suspects,hwo had repackaged hundreds of packages from the hijacked truck into bags
inside was cocain .
as much as 1,100 kilograms.
some of the arrested suspects cooperated with the police, they claimed to have been hired specifically for this operation.
if they clients can’t get the cocaine any other way ,they have to hijack the trucks and containers
they are ” plan B”. even without doing anything they will each get 10,000 euros, according to their own statement.
authorities also arrested its leader,one of the Hells Angels chiefs in Hamburg.
but this job was organized independently of the bikers
he was sentenced to ten years in prison .in court he admitted to hijacking the truck but remained silent about who he worked for .
professional crime often remains opaque, they divided their work and quickly adapted to new situations.
everyting that constitute a major problem in the fighting of organized crime can be summed up as follows:
there is a major misunderstanding among the public and politicians about the dimensions of organized crime .hardly any politician in the german bundestag is aware that weare talking about some 4 or 5 thousand organized crime groups in Europe
in germany,thefocus on organized crime has largeley highlighed so- called clans,often grougs of Arab descent.
it is clear that the only reason political debate is dominated by the so -called crime clan is because they are among the most dummer of these groups ,the ones causing trouble on the street
how many personnel should we include in the raid and then check the suspect’s mobile devices and so on ,meanwhile , it is likely that the more professional organized crime groups are laughting themselves to sleep, as they continue to fly under the radar.
the really big fish come into the spotlight when they kill people…..
as i n duisburg in 2007, when six mafiosi were killed.
it only gets public attention when there are bodies in the streets, as in duisburg a few years ago
may 2019
an unknown perpetrator shot two men in a house in the small town of forst,near the easten german city of cottbus.
in the public space , this case went almost unnoticed, the victims were two members of a drug gang from montenegro,police quiclkly determined that the attack awas carried out by a professional killer .
the victims gang fierce wae with othhe balkan clans comepting for market share.
there was adeath in Amsterdam in Malaga , in Athens
and especially in the Balkans.
a crime scene in serbia, the man killed here was a member of one of the rival drug clans originally from the city of kotor in Montenegro
footage shows the man driving into the garage,two men appeared and opened fire
sitting next to thevictim was a policewoman ,who was uninjured. even serbian police are caught up in the gang wars
we are in Vracar , this is part of Belgrade,many murders ,mafia murders happened recently here that’s because it’s a very wealty area and many mafia members buy real estate here.
organizewd crime spread rapidly in serbia after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc
first democratic leader ,one of the people who actually brought down Milosevic, was assassinated in 2003 by an organized crime group.
the drug- smuggling gang worked with parts of the secrets services who killed him with snifer fire. this shows the power of organized crime.
at least 50 people that we know for sure have been killed in connection with these gang councils.
the feud started over a drug shipment ,one gang accuses another of stealing cocaine, the number is relatively small.
they were in a war for 200 kilograms of cocaine, 200 kiograms really forthe numbers in the gang, not a lot of drugs.
gangs are the match of the global cocaine trade.
they hired professional hitmen.
this ganngs have people who provide them with, some like this perfect silicon masks.that when you put them on yourself you really can’t recognize the mask.
so they look like human faces.
they are not even afraid of the camera catching them. and they committed murder because they confused the police.
the balkan mafia also gets its cocaine directly from south america
in june 2019 , nearly 20 tons were seized in philadelphia . the group from Montenegro had been buying drugs from sputh america cartels .
they don’treally care about street distribution.they only sell large quantities of drugs to a other European gangs.
these balkan”godfathers” did not only export large quantities of cocaine.
they also trade in murder .
Vienna , 2018 . just before christmas.
a hitman ambushes two men as they left the resturant.one died. the other was seriously injured. the men were from rival serbian drug clans.once again the perpetrator left no trace.
three years later, Vienna’s murder remains unsovled. and the killings continue .
Un specialists are based in Vienna.what makes the cartels so dangerous and powerful
is something that Italy’s angela me has spent years analyzing.
“one of the advantages is that they have no accountability,so the government is accountable the people,and they have to operate according to certain standards,they don’t have those standards so they can operate without asking for permission ,they use any kind of method,not just violence but also how they control their territory , etc.which makes them stronger.and no government can beat them in that regard”
-angela Me
starting with richard nixon in 1971
” we must wage what i call total war against public enemy number one in the United states, the deadlydrug problem .”
-richard Nixon
the superpower is at war with drug cartels one of the battlegrounds is colombia .
US sent troopers and money ,traders were hunted down
coca fields were poisened,crops were burned
but even 50 years of fighting couldn’t ruin the business.
drugs remain the most profitable black market for organized crime and are by far, the most profitable for organized crime
organized crime has an annual turnover of up to two trillion dollars.
drug trafficking alone generates up to 700 billion dollars.
every year , US authorities record hundreds of boats carrying cocaine from colombia to mexico from there the product is smuggled to the United states , the world’s largest market .
cocain has changed Mexico.initially , when thegovernment tried to tackle the problem of trafficking and organizewd crime, violence erupted.
pressure from the mexican government had unfortunate consequences
the disruption has reduced the amount of cocaine being transferred from mexico, and so tha created tension within the group because they fight over a smaller piece of the pie.
mexico reall y paid the highest price in terms of violence
for years it was mostly civilians who paid the price
as in the province of Veracruz.
since 2007, 27 journalists have been murdered here ,they have reported on cartel crimes and corrupt politicians .
one of them was maria elena ferral her daughter fernanda grew up amidst danger .
despite the threats , her mother spoke out against corrupt and influential local politicans.
in march 2020 she was shot in front of her car.
the subsequent protests fell on deaf ears .once more fernanda was protected by bodyguards she wants to continue her mother’s work.
when fernanda and her brother visit their old house ,killers were waiting for them.
she continues to leave in fear, those who ordered the murder of her mother have not been caught
in the summer of 2021, fernanda ran for parliament in Mexico and has raised awareness for the families of murdered victims.
since 2006 ,125,000 people have been killed in mexico’s drug war.
drugs are smuggled from south america directly to the US ns Europe,but also to west africa.
Mali is an important transit hub ,here UN forces are trying to push back Islamisc militias but the militias are growing increasingly powerful as they make mony from cocaine smuggling
as an UN experts have discovered.
” i was asked by the UN to spearhead a project, what we found was that most of the organised crime groups operating in Latin America who were trying to get cocaine into Europe, they had to go through historical transit routes or trafficking routes in parts of Africa.
and it is impossible for criminal groups to bring drugs into Europe without actually paying taxes to various terrorist groups along the way .”
-Matthew Garrod
in particular ,groups linked to Al -.Qaeda are profit from the drug trade in west africa.
law enforcement members will actually just look away , because they will be paid lot more by these particular groups.
because they are much more powerful in certain parts of the world. it gets to the point where it’s hard to see how this can be calculated effectively.
Un mission becomes more difficult .
in the summer of 2021 , a german troop patrol was attacked in Mali.
Terrorists in East Africa also make money from drug trafficking .
here , it’s not about cocaine, but heroin, smuggled from Afghanistan and on it’s way to Europe.
in the Mediterranean , European ships arrest drug smugglers.
in june 2020 , italian investigators seized a shipment of captagon.
the stimulant has been trafficked by so called Islamic state .
its street value : one billion euros.
here in Vienna , UN expers know how dangerous it is when drugs and terror mix.
northen Irishman Neil Walsh is an analyst and former police officer .
” in my law enforcement career working in UK and Europol in the Hague intelligence and evidence all the time show thhe liks between organised crime and terrorism,it’s always been there.”
for decades , british troops in northern ireland fought against IRA separatists
the group finances itself through organized crime.
the IRA feared informers and traitors, contact with criminals is considered a risk.
terrorist organizations then protect themselves from the risk and their own members find ways to engage in extortion ,kidnapping for ransom, drug trafficking , ans so on, and that makes them less vulnerable.
and it’s called DOY organized crime – do it yourself.
IRA likes to present itself as a political and moral force.
but disagreements among members divided its message:one subgroup made a show of being drug dealers while other members were linked to large -scale cocaine trafficking.
1988
good friday agreement was signed, which formally ended the conflict with the IRA more than 20 years ago .
but despite the peace, old habits die hard.
whatever group you look at , whether it’s an active dissident group or a group that agres to peace, even if only temporarily , they all need funds for propaganda , for recruitment.
they pay salaries to their members, they even pay pensions to their retired members.
to maitain power,both sides smuggle cigrettes ,weapons and even people , a multi -million dollar businesss in nothern Ireland.
all of the groups , they all continue to engage in varying degrees of organized crime to continue their cash flow, this is not limited to the UK or een Europe,it is on a global scale , we have even found links between paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and the Middle East through money laundering.
a used car dealership onthe outskirts of dusseldorf . Leganes -born ownerused the modest business to launder hundreds of thousands of euros until his harrest in 2018, he was a key figure in the world of moeny laundering.
you have a used car business that uses traded used cars to move cocaine around Europe.
you pack the cocaine in hidden compartment in the car.you drive from germany to spain, from spain to france.
they move cash in the same way
the dealer has long been under scrutiny by German and American authorities, they wittnessed him using drug money to by cars and Europe ,which he then sold in West Africa
until his arrest , he was associated with the lebanese terrorist group, Hezbollah
Hezbollah is supported by Iran . it controls parts of Lebanon, is active in syria , ad has even fought a war with Israel . the constant ongoing violence has prompted thousands of Lebanese to leave the country .
they migrated to Africa,Europe. the United States , and especially to South America.
that is one of the reasons why Hezbollah began to develop ties with organized crime because its network of supporters around the world
could actually be used to provide servides to organized crime
2019
a lebanese man was arrested in South America on suspicion of mon ey laundering.
criminals not only need to launder cash, but also move the merchandise and they provide that service as well
for years US authorities have been cracking down on Hezbollah money launderers.
in 2019 , one of its leaders was sentenced to five years in prison,others are still awaiting trial, Hezbollah maintains contacts with Lebanese expatriates almost all over the world : A global network oforganized crime.
Hezbollah is like the Amazon , DHL and Western Union of the criminal underworld.
this video clip shows a raid in Europe,combating transnational crime syndicates is becomiong increasingly complicated for Europol.
the European police agency headquarters in the Hauge.
organized crime is no longer based on groups,its based on the networks that they use as well as service providers,people who are exxperts in IT ,finance, law , logistics, they try to minimize their risks and then , of course , also minimize their costs .
cooperation is highly interconnected , alliances canchange overnight, and borders are no longer an issue, Europol itself is far from being that flexible.
Europol regularly pulishes videos of operations across Europe.
they broke up group after group.
arresting dealer after dealer ,new criminals emerge to replace them.
whenever there is an empty spot, someone will fill it in a very short time
often only small fish are caught ,without bankers and lawyers in the background ,the business would not function.
that’s why you have to focus on those who lead criminals activities and not on those who operate at street level.
september 2019
easier said than done, cse in point : The netherlands, dutch lawyer derk Wiersum was shot .
he represented a key witness who wanted t testify against Moroccan drug traffickers
and 18 months later ,journalist peter de Vries was murdered in amsterdam,he was advised the same key witnesses ,the assassination order came from a leader in the cocaine trade.
we must recognise that organised crime poses increasing and diverse risks to EU members states and society as a whole, we msit tale action now before it is too late.
at the dusseldorf higher court , an explosive trial illustrates the new normal , mafia members are alleged to have lent money to the Turkish defendant for a cocaine deal with a Moroccan traffickers
prosecutors have evidence from undercover officers, thaders at the end of the chain arn 5,00o euros per kilo, all of this is part of an international shadow economy that the German justice system can barely touch.
for dedaces , criminalclanssuch as Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta have managed to build structures in Germany.
sandro mattioli examines how the calabrian group succeeded in Germany. mattioli has read thousands of pages of files on the ‘Ndrangheta from the italian authorities.
the mafiosi was heard praising Germany,saying ” anything ” was possible there.to stay that way , they say it is important to be quiet like in “chiesa “,in church .
they know exactly where they can work without attracting attention or having to fear consequences , the problem is that the area is too big.
in downtown duisburg, just across from the district court.
the mafia spent years secretly laundering money throug an ice cream shop.
“ten years ago, when i stared investigating the mafia , i always thought i twas impossible to find out who was a member of the organization ,now it is clear that the police know a lot when it comes to affiliations.they know exactly who moves in what circles.but there were no further consequences.
-sandro mattioli
in Baden -Wurttemberg ,the resturant owner Mario L, becam a respected figure.
it wasclear to every investigator who dealt with him ,that he was in the mafia , he poened one resturant after another
and probably more in the in italian archives, the number is more than 140.
mario L . arranged catering for the center -right CDU party, and met the future European commissioner Gunther O ettinger.
after years without facing justice , he was sentenced to 10 years by an italian court in 2019.
2021
since early 2021 ,the largest mafia trial in years has been underway in Calabria, with 355 defendants, and hundreds of defense laywers, the prosecutors wants to expose the entire structure
in Germany , such a trial is stil a long way off .
for years, italian prosecutors like nicola gratteri have tried ti take on the ‘Ndrangheta.
he carried out a spectacular anti.-mafia operation called ” Metropolis” in 2013
at the time , italian ivnestigators disvoered links to Irish extremists
a former member of the provisional IRA was arrested.
in operation metropolis , the paramilitaries have a huge cash reserve that they want to invest , so the mafia essentially says:
” well , we can help you clean that money and invest it in legitimate business “
the mafia develops land , builds luxury apartments, when necessary ,they put pressure on the previous owner .
the mafia helped launder 450 million euros with alleged ” foremr” provisional IRA members, pouring the money into properties in Calabria .
the key figure in the moeny launderingplot was jailed for years in the 1970
after being found guilty of involvement in IRA bombings.
Brexit has shown how unstable the situation in nothern ireland still is.
mich of northen Ireland is actually run by paramilitary groups there are certain parts of northen ireland that the police just can’t police, they can’t go in .
and the message they get from the local community is that we are run by the paramilitaries
and even in the UK, the police cant’t be everywhere.
unbeknownst to him , Hezbollah was using a London warehouse to store thousands ofcooling pads filled with amonium nitrate.
ammonium nitrate is used primarily as a fertilizer.it is also commonly found in small amounts in medical devices.
the deadly capabilities of the chemical were demonstrated in the summer of 2020 in Beirut.
500 tons exploded in the harbor , destroying part of the city.
you can’t just walk into a pharmacy and by the three tons of ammonium nitrate found in london thats’ were a worldwide support network comes in handy
you by ice packs , first aids , kits, and you slowly accumlate them over time in the warehouse and then at some point ,and some point there are enough of them to allow the bomb maker to enter .
in 1995, US terrorists used ammonium nitrate to blow a federal building in Oklahoma.
it’s a substance that alarms the investigator.
In Germany too ,Hezbollah has established an organizational structure and stored ammonium nitrate.
in spring 2020 Hezbollah was banned in Germany,but it continues to operate illegally.
Hezbollah is patient , like Al -Qaeda, and will likely take their time to chhosingtheir spots where they feel like they can have maximun impact.
in the end , thheir raison d’etre ,rightly,is terrorism.
just like drug cartels , terrorist groups lile Hezbollah need to launder their money ,and move it around the world.
often , major financial centers are used.
in london, former financial watchdog andbanger Graham Barrows has seen the practice up close
london is a kind of perfect storm of legal systems, which are useful corporate structureswhich are useful , it provides a lot of tools for laundering money, so companies for example.
that exist solely to move money around the world.
80 perent of global trade is conducted in dollars so a few big banks play a key role only they have permission to inject dollars into the financial system.
one of them is Deutsch bank, which has since become notorious for the level of dirty money that flows through deutsche bank to whatever safe haven they desired.
Lebanon’s FBME bank isone such client, in july 2020 , New York banking regulators determined
that it and Deutsche bank had dumped $618 billion dollars into financial markets, much of the money can be traced to terrorists groups and drug cartels.
there is truly a global network ofcompanies ,banks and operators that will provide those servies to anyone operatin in the criminal economy ,whether through corruption,organized crime or the financing of terrorism .
15 August 2008 , new york , US
the financial crisis exposed why many financial authorities were only half -hearted in challenging the system.
the global economy has long been overly dependet on dirty money
the kind head of the UNODC office of drugs and crime is effectively saying the only thing stopping the global economy from collapsing is dirty money entering the system and that’s as good a clue as you can get, how importan dirty money is to the global economy
that dependency continued after the financial crisis, up to three trillion euros are generated illegally every year,that’s close to Germany’s gross domestic product, and about three percent of global GDP.
imagine if we wiped out three percent of global economic activity tomorrow, we would have the worst depression the world has ever seen.
it would collapse the global economy, so there is a kind of link between criminal activity and economic activity , which you can¨t just erase instantly.
Prague, in the Czech repbulic.
lile neighouringslovakia , the european Union country is thought to suffer from widespread organised crime.
in 2017 Czech journalists pavla holcova and her slovak colleauge jan kuciak began researching the ‘Ndrangheta’s influence on the government.
jan contacted pavla saying that the prime minister had a new asistant , she was very young she is a former miss universe contestant and there is no public information. what make her quilified for such a position
pavla and jan started digging a little deeper and they discovered that she shared a company with antonio abdullah,who is based in Calabria, and that he may have ties t o the ‘Ndrangha.
Jan Kuciak was 27 at the time , working from home as an investigative journalist.
jan actually did more analyzing of the documents then talking to confiential sources, he’s the quet type,the analytic type,putting it all together ,piece by piece to understand the whole picture.
both understood, that i t c ould be complicated,but they thought they might be at risk from Italy so they were more careul wheter they were being followed or not .
but they believe that there woll not be much impact from that story , nobody really paid attention to organized crime in Slovakia at the time.
february 21, 2018
int the middle of the night, a former soldier broke into Kuciak’s house and shot the journalist dead, kuciak’s 27 year old fiancée , martina was also killed.
when it became known that kuciak had investigated possible crimes among the prime minister’s entourage, thousands demonstrated against corrupption.
slovakian prome minister Robert Fico launched a offfensive, offering a one million euro cash reward for clues,but those questions remain unanswered.
after jan was killed, pavla took over and really tried to finish the job that jan started and never got to finish
holcova is temporarily under police protection,but she continue to follow kuciak’s leads.
the reporter is investigating marian kocner, a well -knon businessman in slovakia, kocner is suspected of evading millions of euros in taxes,one day kocner contacted kuciak.
he recorded how the busiessman told him” i will collect your and your family’s dirty secrets and you will stop writing”
kocner is under pressure,kuciak’s killer and his assistant were arrested ,leading investigators to the buisnessman.
eventually ,kocner was tried as the alleged mastermind behind the murder,his activities were investigated by thecourts and by journalists.
one of the key pieces of evidence where the two phones of marian kocner,one of the phones cotained a backup of three more messages andthose conversations actually revealed his conversations with the judges, with the prosecutors .
this is evidence that kocner has bribed politicians and judges.
one judge has been intimidated by one of his colleagues.
he sent this mesage and actually said:
“she should to do what she is required to do ” or she will end up like kuciak”
Holcova published the report , triggering showaves
21 judges were actually detained
it was huge,holcova don’t remember if this happening in any other europen country
the former police chief who was still investigating the kuciak case was also arrested on suspicion of corruption
they were charged with eading an organized criminal groups,that was really surprising.
in the kuciak’s murder trial ,marian kocner was initially acquitted.
it shocked the victim’s family,then , in the spring of 2021 , the supreme court ordered a new trial a sign of slovakia’s constant fight against organiszed crime.
with his decision to kill a journalist,marian kocner actually destroyed an entire system that had existed for 12 years and before the murder,no one could hardly imagine that the system would ever change it was so much deeply embedded in society
when the tiny islan nation of Malta joined the EU in 2004, a lot changed for its half a million residents.
it has also become a gateway for criminals into the EU, reporter daphne Caruana Galizia was interested in this issue.
as her sister told , she was actually covering politics in Malta and that led her to discover the crime, which was actaully transnational.
last sentence her sister wrote was :
” there are criminals everywhere you look, the situation is desperate”
daphne caruana galizia has been intimidated and threatened for years
she had become isolated towards the end of her life,there was a long and intense campaign against he , it was socially legitimized to the point where people would joke about murder and witches and bombs.
that what corinne and family said privately when daphne was murdered.
hitmem followed the journalist and blew her up along with her car.
if you report one story after another and nothing happens , you become the last line of defense
between the rule of law and its collpase and it becomes very easy to get rid of that person and itt was what happened in this case.
following the murder ,the maltese police took action against the criminal structure , arresting the perpetrators,just
as in slovakia , the trail leads to the ruling party.
that caused protest.
they underestimate who they kill,in the end ,that’s what it’s all about
the man suspected of ordering the killing
was arrested in late 2019 while trying to flee on his yacht
four years after the murder , there is still no verdict in the case ,the victims family contiujnes to fight for justice
meanwhile ,t he European parliament has named a press room after Daphne caruana Galizia
if we start saying “okay , we’re going to solve organized criem globally ” it’s never going to happen. but you don’t set out to win a war, you just set out to do what you can do, it is the accumulation of all the small actions that will make a big difference
orgaized crime is a global problem and to have any chance of defeating it ,those fighting for justice must think globally as well.