exclusive
A murder in Spain concerns the German police. According to research by WDR and NDR The victim was an undercover agent for the Hessian LKA, deployed to infiltrate drug cartels. Was he exposed before his death?
Aleksandar K.’s life ended on a chair in a holiday apartment in the southern Spanish city of Marbella. With a plastic bag over his head, hands and feet tied. His murderers apparently tortured him for days before shooting him twice in the head.
On June 30, 2022, one day after the bloody crime, the landlord discovered the body. Spanish police believe the 33-year-old Serb was a victim of the drug war over the cannabis and cocaine business in Europe.
German residency permit found
The trail in this murder case leads to research by WDR and NDR to Germany. The Spanish investigators, experts in the fight against organized crime, needed some time to positively identify the dead man. He had no identification papers with him. However, a German residence permit is said to have been found in the apartment in the holiday complex.
According to research by WDR and NDR The Serb worked as an undercover agent, i.e. as a recruited informant, for the Hessian State Criminal Police Office (LKA). On his behalf, he was supposed to provide information about the machinations of the drug gangs. His spying activities may have ultimately been K.’s undoing.
How WDR and NDR According to research, Aleksandar K., who most recently lived in Offenbach in Hesse, is said to have been involved in the drug dealings of a Europe-wide network. The Hanau public prosecutor’s office is now investigating murder.
It is still unclear why K. was killed on the Costa del Sol last year. It is possible that the Serb was exposed before his murder: the investigators in Hesse are now said to have evidence, including from intercepted telephone calls, that Aleksandar K. is said to have confessed to his murderers under torture that he had worked as an informant for the German police.
Notes for several Investigation process
The Hessian narcotics investigators are said to have specifically used the Serb to investigate a cross-border drug network that is said to have traded cannabis, cocaine and other drugs on a large scale. The information provided by the killed police informer is said to have already been incorporated into several investigations.
The undercover agent also played a role in the trial of Frankfurt criminal defense attorney Benjamin D., who was sentenced to seven years and nine months in prison by the Frankfurt am Main regional court in July for drug trafficking and money laundering.
The court considered it proven that the 46-year-old lawyer had helped organize drug transport from Spain to the Rhine-Main region. D., together with other suspects, is said to have set up a kind of shipping company through which drugs, especially cannabis, are said to have been brought from the region around Barcelona to Germany.
Drug deals via a crypto phone
Benjamin D. is said to have carried out the drug transactions primarily via a crypto cell phone and the “EncroChat” program. There he called himself “Ignacio Varga”, after a criminal character from the US crime series “Better Call Saul”.
D. made an extensive confession in court, reported on his cocaine addiction and heavy alcohol consumption, and how he increasingly slipped into the criminal environment from 2018 onwards.
He regularly provided legal advice for drug dealers and eventually worked as an intermediary between the smugglers. One of his contacts with the criminal networks was apparently the undercover agent Aleksandar K.
When asked, neither the Hessian Interior Ministry nor the State Criminal Police Office wanted to comment on the matter.
Whether and how It remains unclear whether the Hessian prosecutors used the Serb shortly before his death. Likewise, whether his fateful trip to southern Spain last year may have been carried out on behalf of the police.
According to Spanish media reports, after the murder, investigators there initially assumed that the victim could have been caught between the fronts of a drug war that had been raging for years between two feuding families from Kotor (Montenegro). Several assassination attempts in Spain, the Balkans, Turkey, the Netherlands and other countries are said to have been carried out by these drug cartels, which are fighting with extreme brutality for their position in the Europe-wide cocaine trade.
Apparently several suspects have been identified
Meanwhile, according to information from WDR and NDR Through the forensics at the crime scene, fingerprints and recordings from the surveillance cameras in the holiday resort, several suspects are identified who are said to have first tortured and then shot Aleksandar K.
The Spanish and German authorities assume that it is at least one person from the rocker milieu. The suspects are currently on the run.
The basic use of informants by the police is currently also a concern for the federal government. According to the wishes of the FDP-led Federal Ministry of Justice, the deployment of recruited and mostly paid informants should be better regulated by law through clear guidelines.
A corresponding draft of a new “law regulating the use of undercover investigators and persons of trust as well as provocation of crimes” was sent to the Federal Ministry of the Interior in July.