They were moving half of all the cocaine smuggled into Europe and became one of the richest and most powerful super cartels, but these gangsters from the Balkans with their allies in the Italian Mafia and a powerful gang in Brazil was hit by a global police smackdown. Let me tell you about it.
The Mob Reporter here with news of the downfall of the major network called the Western Balkan Cartel with the arrest of several High-Value Targets — the biggest, baddest, most-wanted criminals in Europe — in a four-year operation, along with the seizure of eight tonnes of cocaine and tens of millions worth of cash and luxury assets. Among this network, police say, there was at least one murder a day.
What police call the Western Balkan Cartel is a borderless, aggressive transnational narco network that pushed into the stratosphere by forging alliances with two other players in the trade, one on each side of the Atlantic: the ‘Ndrangheta, a powerful Italian Mafia group, and the Primeiro Comando da Capital, known as the PCC or, in English, the First Capital Command, a major-league crime group based in Brazil.
The key to their success was the ability to orchestrate regular shipments of cocaine — we’re talking enormous, multi-tonne loads — from Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador in South America, where cocaine is produced, across the Atlantic into West Africa, then redistributing through handling centres in Europe’s major markets, with end-to-end control of cocaine from their safe havens in Turkey and Dubai.
Alarm bells about the changing drug trade sounded in in 2019 when U.S. Customs and Border Protection found the largest single cocaine load in their history — 18 tonnes, worth $1.3 billion — in this ship from South America that stopped in Philadelphia on its way to the Netherlands.
It was the work of the Balkan cartels. And they were just warming up.
In a series of coordinated police operations, people linked to the cartel were arrested around the world over four years of the probe: Spain, Croatia, Serbia, Turkey, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Brazil, Peru, Germany, and Dubai.
They codenamed it Operation Adriatic.
Among those arrested are: Nenad Petrak, a Croatian wanted on an Interpol Red Notice and described as a ringleader in the Western Balkan Cartel, with operations in nine countries; and Christijan Palič, alleged to be the immense global broker coordinating activites. Palič had allegedly been busy networking abroad, including building bridges with Brazil’s PCC to secure a reliable supply.
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CREDITS:
Music is Addicted by VYEN // At the Foot of the Sphinx by Twin Musicom // Traversing by Godmode // traditional Balkan singing from UNESCO;
Computer text scroll video by Vladislav Styazhkin, vintage maps by Videvo, boat in Adriatic Sea by Videvo, Croatia carved lion statue by Videvo, Dominoes falling by Videvo all at Videvo;
Serbia aerial video by Neven Bozic and Sao Paulo time lapse video by Natã Romual, both at Pexels; PCC photo by Public Security and Community Relations Observatory.
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