Naples, drugs and money laundering: a gang of drug traffickers defeated
In the early hours of the morning, a vast operation by the state police and the financial police began in Naples and in the province in execution of an order for the application of personal precautionary measures, issued by the investigating judge of the court of Naples at the request of the district anti-mafia directorate of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Naples. The measures concern people held responsible, in various capacities, for association aimed at the international trafficking of narcotic substances and money laundering.
Drug trafficking
Having landed on the mainland, the cocaine was collected and transported by road by compliant hauliers, to then be hidden in warehouses and hideouts between Campania, Calabria, Emilia Romagna and Lazio. It emerges from the police investigations. The gang of drug traffickers, in addition to having coordinates in Europe, Africa and South America, could also count on a dense network of collaborators in various Italian regions.
The gang of narcos
To be routed is a gang of international drug traffickers based in the Neapolitan area, coordinated by the well-known narcos Raffaele Imperiale, world layer of drug trafficking, already convicted while on the run in Dubai and close friend of Bruno Carbone Bruno, another Neapolitan broker in the drug trafficker, already definitively condemned, landed and taken over yesterday by the forces of order in Ciampino after his arrest in Turkey.
The modus operandi
The investigations made it possible to completely reconstruct Imperiale’s circle of relationships, not only in Italy, making it possible to identify the subjects who coordinated the management of the money, issued instructions to the drug “couriers” and managed the vehicles used for the transport of drugs and cash and, in general, the logistics chain to support the organization. The gang of drug traffickers managed by Imperiale, according to the investigators of the state police and the financial police, recycled and re-used the proceeds of drug trafficking, partly damaged abroad, making use of alternative monetary management systems, based on the work of international foreign exchange traders, the so-called Hawala. Not only. Drug money has also been reinvested in speculative activities such as gold trading.
Relations with the mafias and communication systems
Stable relationships have emerged with Camorra clans from all over the Neapolitan area but also with the Calabrian ‘ndrine which, in addition to sourcing cocaine from the Imperiale group, provided their support for the recovery of huge consignments of drugs that arrived at the seaport of Gioia Tauro , thanks to unfaithful port operators. A part of the representatives of Imperiale’s Italian distribution network was fully identified and arrested (at the end of March 2021) in a joint operation by the Naples Flying Squad and the Gico, with the seizure of large quantities of cocaine, hashish and money . Members of the organization were in constant contact with each other thanks to encrypted communication systems (including Encro-Chat and Sky-Ecc), investigated by a joint Franco-Dutch-Belgian investigative team and acquired through a collaboration international cooperation with the Europol agency and with the French and Dutch judicial authorities, coordinated by Eurojust.