exclusive
An undercover agent for the Frankfurt police was murdered in Spain. Research by WDR and NDR show that the informant himself was apparently very active in the German drug business. Politicians from Hesse are now demanding clarification.
It seems as if fiction has become bloody reality. The parallels are certainly striking. The 2019 Netflix series “Skylines” is about the rap music business in Frankfurt and drug trafficking. In it, a Frankfurt detective recruits a young man from the Balkans as an informant. She sends him to infiltrate a gang of drug dealers. In the end, the informant is exposed, the criminals tie him to a chair, torture him and finally kill him.
The life of a real Frankfurt police informant – Aleksandar K., a 33-year-old Serb from Offenbach – ended in a similarly cruel way. He was found murdered at the end of June at the Golden Beach holiday resort in Marbella, southern Spain – tied to a chair, with plastic wrap wrapped around his neck and head, and killed with two shots in the back of the head.
There are said to be indications that he could have been exposed as an informant for the German police before his death. The investigators suspect that K. was tortured. His suspected murderers, who are said to come from Germany, are on the run. The Hanau public prosecutor’s office is investigating the case for murder.
Undercover agent as a big player in the drug business
How WDR and NDR had researched, Aleksandar K. worked as an undercover agent for the Frankfurt am Main criminal police and was assigned to several groups that were said to have traded drugs. New research now shows that the police informant himself is said to have organized large-scale transports of cannabis and cocaine from Spain and the Netherlands to Germany.
In Giessen, among other places, an investigation was already underway in 2020 against the Serb for the illegal import of narcotics in large quantities, which has since been discontinued due to his death.
In addition, K. is said to have coordinated drug shipments from Spain to Germany together with the now convicted lawyer Benjamin D.. For this purpose, the police informant is said to have run a Frankfurt freight forwarding company.
The lawyer and the undercover agent are said to have divided work. Benjamin D. is said to have been responsible for “customer acquisition” and the informant for logistics. According to the investigation, the men communicated with encrypted SkyECC cell phones.
The informant is said to have had similar business relationships with a group of suspected drug dealers who have been on trial in Giessen since last Tuesday. The informant is also said to have coordinated transports with these people in 2021 and traded large quantities of drugs.
V-man leader refuses to testify
The person of trust (VP) of the Frankfurt police responsible for Aleksandar K. is also listed as a witness in this case. According to information from WDR and NDR However, the official is said to have made use of his right to refuse to provide information in order not to run the risk of incriminating himself. Extensive electronic communication between him and the undercover agent is also said to have been deleted. Neither the public prosecutor’s office nor the Frankfurt police wanted to comment on this.
According to research by WDR and NDR The first personnel consequences within the Frankfurt police are said to have occurred some time ago due to the fatal operation of the undercover agent. The department responsible for managing human sources is said to have been de-facto disbanded. The officials are said to have been prohibited from carrying out their duties. When asked, the police headquarters did not want to comment.
Politicians demand clarification
The use of the police informer is now also a concern for the Hessian opposition. Several domestic politicians are demanding clarification from the state government about the activities of the informant and about possible misconduct by the Frankfurt police in managing the informant.
“The facts described were not previously known to the Free Democrats faction in the Hesse state parliament,” confirmed FDP domestic politician Jörg-Uwe Hahn when asked. “This was not reported in the Interior Committee. We expect Interior Minister Peter Beuth to report comprehensively on the murder case described in the Interior Committee and to clarify the circumstances.”
“The informant system needs to be abolished. The informant system is not only a danger to democracy, but also to the recruited informants themselves, as this case once again dramatically illustrates,” says the domestic policy spokesman for the Hessian Left , Torsten Felstehausen. It is scandalous that the Frankfurt criminal police “apparently cannot guarantee the safety of a person who obtains information for this authority and is therefore cruelly tortured and murdered.”
“The facts raise a number of questions,” says Heike Hofmann, domestic policy spokeswoman for the Hesse SPD. “Is it actually true that the informant was killed because he was exposed? Was he in Spain on behalf of the Hessian police? If so, why wasn’t he better protected?”
Upon request from NDR and WDR The Hessian Ministry of the Interior did not want to comment on the matter.