In the past you would probably have said storage room, today it is called “self storage”. One always imagines that people store valuable or secret things in these rented places that have no place in the apartment. Or globetrotters who store their belongings while they travel around the world. Kenan S. had a completely different use for the storage room in Munich, albeit also a secret one: he stashed kilos of drugs.
“There are cryptic references in the files to a Bulgarian network of drug dealers in self-storage facilities,” said Gilbert Wolf, presiding judge of the 8th criminal chamber at the Munich I Regional Court. But there is no evidence.
The 26-year-old Bulgarian is charged with inciting the import of narcotics in large quantities and trafficking. Two deliveries from Madrid with a total of twelve kilos of marijuana went to his storage room, which he had rented under a false name. “I’m very sorry. I understand what I did and don’t want to have anything to do with drugs anymore,” says Kenan S. in choppy German. He learned the language, among other places, in Stadelheim, where he has been in custody for ten months.
The fact that Kenan S. was exposed as a drug dealer is thanks to a random check by Spanish customs: At the beginning of January this year, the officers noticed a package that was addressed to a self-storage facility on Landsberger Strasse in Munich. Sender: an electronics store from Madrid. The colleagues informed Munich customs, who inspected the address and came across another package. This was waiting for the recipient in an interim storage facility. An X-ray machine was used to detect “organic material,” as a customs officer told the court, and the drug dog also made an audible noise.
The suspicious cargo was finally opened at the public prosecutor’s office. What was found inside: a small power distribution box – and in it five and a half kilograms of marijuana. “My office smelled, you can’t even imagine that,” said prosecutor Anais Panhans during the trial. A package prepared by customs was then delivered to the warehouse, and when Kenan S. wanted to pick it up on January 11th, a special unit from the Federal Criminal Police Office intervened.
There are similar criminal proceedings in many cities – but there is no evidence that the crimes are connected
“Ivan Stojanov”, Kenan S. came up with this alias name. He also had a correspondingly fake ID card. Under this identity, he had also rented a storage room in a self-storage facility in Saarbrücken, where three packages were delivered. There was also a storage compartment in Berlin and a storage box.
Judge Gilbert Wolf lists that there are similar criminal proceedings with self-storage facilities and drugs in Memmingen, also in Neu-Ulm and other cities. But, the customs officer also says, they were unable to discover any clues or connections to Kenan S. Although there were 27 pieces of evidence of delivered shipments from Spain on the email account in his cell phone, there was no other solid evidence. And: “Packages continue to come from Madrid to Germany,” says Judge Wolf.
First withdrawal and then prison – the question is still open
Those involved in the trial agree to a deal: the defendant makes a comprehensive confession through his lawyer Maximilian Donhauser, and in return the court – unless other circumstances arise – grants him a prison sentence of four and a half to five years.
Kenan S., who described himself to the expert as a “Bulgarian Turk with a Muslim faith,” says that he is “not a real Muslim” because of his drug and alcohol consumption. After graduating from high school in Bulgaria, he started studying but dropped out “to earn money.” He worked in construction, went bankrupt with a barbecue station, tried his luck in Berlin and worked for a moving company. “To relieve stress,” he did coke, smoked joints and drank whiskey. The court will decide next week whether the consumption is sufficient to require placement in a rehab clinic.