Mafia base: The coke dealers from Lake Constance

In May, investigators struck a heavy blow against the Italian ‘Ndrangheta – with arrests also in southern Germany. Documents now show out loud NDRResearch into the importance of Germany as a base in the cocaine trade.

Sebastiano G. is no stranger to the small town of Überlingen on Lake Constance. The 48-year-old’s family ran an Italian restaurant there for a long time, right on the lakeshore. Tourists who visit Überlingen by ferry can eat a cheap pizza or an ice cream here. But Sebastiano G., who among friends goes by the nickname “Bacetto”, which means something like “kisses”, should not just be an ordinary innkeeper, at least investigators from the Friedrichshafen criminal police department and the anti-mafia Authority (Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, DIA) in Turin convinced. Rather, they attribute G. to a clan of the Italian mafia organization ‘Ndrangheta, which is why the authorities have been targeting him for several years.

Investigation documents, the journalists of the research networks OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project), IrpiMedia (Investigative Reporting Project Italy) and the NDR now show the central role G. and his family are said to have played in the international cocaine trade. According to this, G. is said to have been involved in organizing cocaine deliveries from South America via various ports in Northern Europe. For this purpose he is said to have cooperated with Colombian, Albanian and Romanian criminals, among others.

Port of Hamburg probably plays an important role

From the investigators’ point of view, the organization of the drug transports is efficient and quite cold-blooded. For example, the gang is said to have taken a “human pledge” to secure a cocaine delivery from a Colombian drug cartel. For this purpose, a Colombian man is said to have been detained in a hotel in the Netherlands until a drug deal was concluded. The man is then said to have been released with a backpack containing several hundred thousand euros in cash, the German investigators suspect.

Investigators believe the group was doing well. The documents mention drug deliveries that went through Rotterdam, Antwerp and Barcelona. And the port of Hamburg apparently also played an important role. In 2018, customs officers confiscated several hundred kilos of cocaine that were hidden in a container ship from the Dominican Republic. The recipients of the delivery could not be determined exactly, but intercepted conversations suggest that in this case, too, the group around G. had a hand in it.

200,000 euros in sales in one week

The accused are said to have brought the cocaine to Italy in vegetable trucks, in order to sell it by the kilo to dealers, but also to restaurateurs. The total turnover the group could have made with its drug business can only be guessed at. From intercepted conversation it emerges, however, that G.’s family, who live in Germany and Italy, is said to have turned around 200,000 euros in cocaine trafficking in a single week.

What happened to the profits from the thriving drug business is not fully understood. From interception logs of the Italian law enforcement authorities it is also clear that the gang may have buried their profits at least partially in so-called earth bunkers in Calabria.

Own company structure in Germany

German investigators are convinced that the group around Sebastiano G. also imported food from Italy to Germany in order to sell it to other innkeepers. For this purpose, the criminals are said to have set up their own company structure in Germany. No sales tax is said to have been paid to the German tax authorities on the trade, the public prosecutor’s office in Konstanz estimates the tax loss at up to two million euros, which is why German tax investigators are investigating several of the accused.

While in the Italian arrest warrant Sebastiano G. is accused of drug trafficking, among other things, two accused in Germany are waiting to be charged, a third accused is currently being sought with an international arrest warrant. The public prosecutor’s office in Konstanz stated that NDRThat most of the accused were in Italy at the time of the raid “due to the corona”, the criminal proceedings pending in Constance are now being carried out with the “special acceleration” required in detention matters.