Cocaine Confidential (29 page)

That particular shipment of coke was uncovered during a special law enforcement operation to try and stamp out a channel through which cocaine was supplied from South America to the European Union and Russia. It later emerged the route was run by a transnational crime group consisting of Ukrainians, Poles and Ecuadorians.

It is claimed ‘a number' of drug traffickers with connections to Mexican and South American coke cartels now live in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. One cocaine dealer in Kiev, a former musician, told me: ‘Ukraine has become a staging post for a lot of the coke heading for Europe and Russia.'

My informant – who we shall call LM – arrived in Kiev as a struggling musician twenty years ago. ‘Back then no one had even heard of cocaine, let alone seen any. But in recent years it's started appearing on the dinner party circuit out here. But more importantly, there are some pretty heavy characters now trafficking it through Ukraine.'

Back in August 2010, Ukrainian border services seized almost 1,200kg of cocaine in the southern seaport of Odessa following an operation backed by international partners including the European Union Border Assistance Mission of Moldova and Ukraine law enforcement. The cocaine, worth around US$180 million, was discovered stashed in furnaces on a ship that had just arrived from Venezuela. That cocaine had a market value of over US$60 million and was hidden inside thick pipes to avoid X-ray detection. It was found only after the pipes were unloaded, broken down and examined. The seizure was just one of a series of comparatively large cocaine hauls at Odessa port, indicating that it is regularly used by cocaine traffickers.

‘Odessa is the perfect place for cocaine traffickers. It's a wild place that pretty much runs itself, which makes it ideal for criminal activities,' says LM. ‘I remember once I was invited by a couple of gangsters to drive down there from Kiev and test out a shipment of cocaine before recommending that they buy a big load. As we drove inside the port perimeter it was clear that the coke traffickers ran everything. We got waved through like royalty and it was only then I realised that all the important port workers were being given bribes.'

Not only is Ukraine an important ‘hub state' for cocaine, it is also emerging as a place where coke has started to be snorted in large quantities by the local population. Kiev is said to have more cocaine users per head of population than any city in the former Soviet Union.

When I stayed in a hotel in the centre of the city, I was offered cocaine twice in the hotel bar during one evening. Ironically, I was in the bar waiting to meet one of the cocaine gangsters who have emerged in Kiev in recent years. When I told him what had happened, he laughed. ‘Kiev is swimming in coke these days. The young people love it because it makes them feel Western, rich and powerful.'

Kiev, the ‘city of a thousand golden domes', is one of the most beautiful settlements in Eastern Europe, home to a host of sublime Orthodox churches and cathedrals, and the site of over a thousand years of Slav culture.

But the stories of Kiev I was interested in hearing revolved around the modern-day criminals who've helped put this ancient city on the cocaine map.

Through a contact in the record business in London, I was introduced to Harry, who has both English and Ukrainian parentage. He moved back to Kiev only five years ago after
spending much of his childhood in Birmingham. Harry admits he has a serious coke habit, which is fed by dealing cocaine to a select band of people he says are ‘very high up in Ukrainian society'.

Harry explains: ‘Coke is the drug of choice here in Kiev for many successful, younger people. They love it. This place is enjoying a boom in many ways and it seems to me that wherever there are successful people there is cocaine.'

Harry first got into coke when he lived and worked in Birmingham. He says he was ‘pleasantly surprised' when he discovered it was just as popular in Ukraine. ‘Here, I am seen as a bit of a freak. Neither fully Ukrainian nor English. When I meet Ukranians for the first time they're confused by my background. But I consider myself very lucky because I've seen the best of both worlds.'

Harry claims to have a business degree from college back in the UK and that when he first arrived in Ukraine he'd lined up a job for a telecommunications company. ‘But that job never worked out properly. Meanwhile I got in with a crowd of locals, including one guy who claimed he trafficked cocaine on a big, international scale.

‘When I suggested to this guy that he should buy a relatively small amount of coke from the cartel he worked for, he laughed at me and said they'd probably kill him if he tried to muscle in on the business in that way. But I urged him to try and do a deal with them and that I'd handle the distribution around Kiev. Well, they agreed on condition we never sold any of the coke outside the city. It was simple
really. The coke that this guy was trafficking was going up to Moscow, often by train, so we were not encroaching on anyone else's turf and back then cocaine was not as popular in Kiev as it is today. I guess I've helped make it that way!'

Harry claims it was relatively simple to set up a coke ‘dealership' in Kiev. ‘I was one of the first serious dealers on the scene here, which is always easier because it means there were no local gangsters upset that I was working their patch. I had a free run at it and there was a whole city to educate about coke.'

Harry says he was very careful initially as he was well aware that the police would come down hard on him because drugs were considered ‘evil' by authorities back then. He explained: ‘Then I had a big break. A relative of mine here mentioned he knew one of the city police chiefs. Well, I knew they were badly paid, so I went in to see this guy and asked him outright if he'd wave my coke business through for a cut of my profits. He agreed instantly and from that moment on I knew I was safe.'

Harry says he's been arrested three times in the past five years but each time the charges against him have been dropped. ‘It's all down to that police chief. He can pull strings and in Kiev you always have to have someone like that on your side.'

These days, Harry controls a lucrative marketplace and even ‘manages' a team of dealers who work on his behalf. He explained: ‘There is a big music scene here and when there are concerts you have tens of thousands of people in one place, so the demand for coke is phenomenal. Recently,
a big European act came to the city and did three nights in a row. I sold $160,000 worth of cocaine over those three nights without one problem from the police because my boys are low key so they don't rub the police up the wrong way. Some private security guards did get pissy with one of my boys when he was caught dealing outside a club after a concert. But we slipped them some cash to sort it out.'

These days, Harry lives in a penthouse apartment in the centre of Kiev. He says he has ‘customers' right up to the top of government and big business. ‘You just wouldn't believe how many people are now into coke in this city. The funny thing is that older people are now getting turned on to it and I have a couple of middle-aged customers who are government ministers.'

But one of Harry's biggest business coups is his love-life. Recently he began dating the daughter of ‘a very important person high up in government'. Harry refuses to reveal who it is but clearly indicated that the girl was related to someone at the very top of the country.

‘I don't want to blow this relationship. She means a lot to me and I have been careful not to let her know what I really do for a living. But of course in the back of my mind is the fact I'm making some brilliant contacts for the future. This country is new and young. Sure, the politicians make mistakes but things can only get better and that's good news for the coke trade, eh?'

And there are many other examples of how countries in the same region can be ‘turned' into cocaine gateways …

Moldova has been quietly ‘converting' into a cocaine-transit country ever since the Soviet satellite states crumbled in the 1990s. Occasionally, Moldovan law enforcement seizes shipments of cocaine, most of it en route to cash-rich Moscow. But the majority of the shipments get through without any problems.

Cocaine usage in Moldova is relatively low as the national weekly wage wouldn't even pay for a gram of the drug on the open market. But the cocaine trafficking trade in this country is now said to be worth in the region of $250 million a year because this tiny country provides a geographically perfect location for cocaine as it makes its way to Russia.

With its numerous parks and treelined streets, the Moldovan capital Chisinau is considered to be one of the greenest cities in Europe. Tourism guides refer to multiple species of birds and amphibians thriving in this busy metropolis. Yet this picturesque city is providing an increasing number of drug traffickers with the perfect transit point for hundreds of millions of pounds worth of cocaine.

‘Cocaine Soldiers' like Sammy are employed to wave through the illicit shipments of coke that are driven east and west though this tiny nation. My first meeting with Sammy was in a sleazy nightclub on the outskirts of Chisinau.

‘I have relatives who work on the borders and they help wave the coke through,' he says. ‘I am paid by another Moldovan but his money comes from the wholesalers and handlers back in Europe and South America.'

Sammy insists he's never taken cocaine in his life and he has no urge to try the drug. ‘Listen, I have three jobs in order to support my wife and children. I don't have time to take drugs. But there's no harm in making some money out of them, surely?'

One of Sammy's other ‘sidelines' is helping ‘transport' young Moldovan women to brothels, mainly in Spain. ‘That's what I call a more traditional job, yes?' he says with a smirk. Just then he flicks his fingers and two girls working in the
nightclub where we are speaking approach. They seem very nervous.

Sammy grabs one of them by the wrist. ‘Isn't she beautiful? How much d'you think she is worth on the open market?'

I shrug my shoulders awkwardly, trying to find the right balance between being appalled by his treatment of the girl and not blowing this interview.

‘I can make $2,000 from this girl. That is a lot of cocaine, my friend.'

But surely, I say, it's much less risky trafficking coke than human beings. Sammy disagrees. ‘No way, man. With girls I get to fuck them, too. In any case you get heavier sentences here for drug smuggling then selling women.'

Sammy predicts that the cocaine trafficking business will expand greatly as the Russians continue to get more prosperous. ‘I hear the Russians have gone coke crazy recently. They can't get enough of the stuff in Moscow, which means the amount of shipments going through here will go up. That means more money for people like me.'

Sammy insists that the illicit trafficking of drugs and sex-workers is an essential part of the Moldovan economy. ‘Countries like Moldova can only survive if they hook into things like smuggling women and coke. There are no big industries here, so what do you expect? It's the way of the world and nothing's going to change that, surely?'

Cocaine trafficking in Moldova, as in all the former Soviet republics, has risen dramatically since the demise of the Soviet Union. Economic and drug-related crimes, the most
visible and predictable results of the deteriorating economic situations in the newly independent countries, have overwhelmed the human and financial resources devoted to them.

But it is Moldova's role as a trans-shipment point for illegal drugs that is at the heart of all this country's connections to cocaine. Sammy even claims that a number of local pilots – originally trained in the military – were recently hired by Colombian coke barons to move a newly acquired secondhand airliner from Moldova to Romania, and then onto Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. ‘You see? Everyone gets paid when they need to move cocaine,' says Sammy.

‘This is only the beginning, my friend. Cocaine is going to make a lot of Moldovans very rich over the next few years.'

Back in that nightclub on the outskirts of Chisinau, Sammy pushes one girl off his lap and clicks his fingers in the direction of the bar. ‘You want some coke, man? It's good stuff.' I politely declined his offer but noticed that at least four of the skimpily clad girls who worked in the club were hovering near us.

‘I think you call them coke whores, yes? They will do anything I ask when they want cocaine.'

Sammy jumped up and two girls locked arms with him and he disappeared in the direction of the bedrooms attached to the club. The place was empty of customers, even though it was a Saturday night. Then I realised the whole business was probably paid for by the sale of cocaine, so profits for the actual business were irrelevant. Across the world there must be tens of thousands of such businesses running at a
loss to help clean the proceeds of cocaine. As another coke baron had said to me: ‘Imagine what would happen if every place cleaning coke money closed down? There would be a lot of unemployment, yes? It's not really in anyone's interest to kill the cocaine business.'

 

Cocaine continues to be often carried in small, concealed, kilogram quantities by couriers known as ‘mules' (or
mulas
), who cross borders either legally, for example, through a port or airport, or illegally elsewhere. Coke can be strapped to the waist or legs or hidden in bags, but more likely it is swallowed in pellets so as to be concealed in the body. If the mule isn't caught, the coke gangsters will naturally reap most of the profits. If he or she is arrested, though, the same criminals usually sever all links, leaving the mule to stand trial for trafficking alone.

In London, for example, the West Indian-dominated Yardie gangs are expert at using people within poor communities to work as mules. One team known as the ‘Bling Bling Gang' – thanks to their luxurious lifestyles and obsession with designer labels – smuggled £50 million worth of cocaine into London through mules over a two-year period a few years back. The Yardies then converted the coke into addictive crack to boost their profit to an estimated £3 million a week.