Snowing in Bali (25 page)

– Andre

Despite being careful with cash, Andre didn't mind floating his childhood friend a relatively small sum, given he was flush with more than half a million euros in his bank and various other places. Luiz and Andre had grown up in the same neighbourhood, played football in the streets, surfed and gone to parties together. One day, years later, Luiz had approached Andre asking for a gig to pay his family's bills, and ended up doing five runs. So, Andre was confident Luiz knew the ropes and could organise this himself. But it backfired spectacularly. Luiz smuggled the pills inside a paraglider sail safely through the airport. But after a tip-off that he was working for Andre, Chief Caieron was watching him. Luiz and his partner, Cristiane, were arrested with 6000 ecstasy pills in green-striped zip lock bags on the same morning as Andre. Luiz ‘spontaneously cooperated', telling the cops the pills were Andre's.

This horse snitched on me. He tells police everything: ‘I've known Andre for more than 20 years. He's a big drug dealer in South Brazil. He's the biggest one.'

– Andre

Later on, Andre would hear his childhood friend was shot 25 times in a typical snitch kill.

In Brazil, they kill snitches like that. Sometimes they cut the throat and pull the tongue through; this is called the ‘Italian tie'. They do that to teach everybody, ‘You want to snitch on somebody, take a look at this picture, now you sure you want to snitch?' My cop friend told me that somebody shot this guy 25 times. I was in the jail but everybody thinks someone did that for me. I think so too.

– Andre

Andre twice had people phoning him in jail, offering to kill Luiz. But talking on an unsecured jail phone line, his reply had always been the same: ‘Do whatever you think is best.' Andre didn't have proof Luiz was dead, but if he was, felt he'd got his just deserts.

I say, ‘Fuck him. Dead? Oh, great.' I lose my life; I lose my house because I had to sell to pay lawyers; I lose my love Gisele; I lose my family. The guy really, really destroyed my life. For what? Because he did bullshit. He did his own thing. Not me. And for this I don't put my head on the pillow and say, ‘Oh, the poor guy is dead.' Good luck to him in the sky, heaven, hell . . . I don't know where God send this poor soul, because he is a poor soul. If you don't have enough foundation, enough soul . . . If you're not strong enough to go to the jail, to play with the cops, then don't play with smuggling drugs, because probably you need to do that one day. Like this guy, ‘Oh, I go to Amsterdam to buy and sell,' but not enough power, not strong enough when the cops say, ‘You . . . ' ‘Okay, it's me, it's me.' The guy talk talk talk. And what made it worse is he was like family.

– Andre

But Andre's poolside ambush wasn't precipitated only by Luiz's ecstasy tablets.

There was another loose-lipped horse who'd given Chief Caieron evidence against him weeks earlier. Again, Andre's unravelling was as a result of a favour. His corrupt cop friend Claudio had called asking if he had a spare horse to run with 8 kilos of confiscated coke to Amsterdam. Andre told him that Diego Amaral was available. As Diego flew out of São Paulo, he was busted. Diego cut a deal with Chief Caieron – whose fervent aim was to catch those who ‘lead the operation'.

It's not easy to get those guys, but when you get them, the sensation is matching, is parallel to the difficulty.

– Chief Caieron

It was a great day for him when Diego turned rat on Andre, spilling names as well as explicit details of his runs for Andre. He told police of his previous run a few months earlier; he'd carried 3 kilos in windsurfer booms, delivered to his house by Andre, to Amsterdam – there Andre sold it, and together they counted the €66,000 in the hotel room. Using some of the cash, Andre bought 10,000 ecstasy pills and 2.2 kilos of skunk, which he wrapped together with €25,000 cash, in a kitesurfing kite, and then sent Diego back home with it. A week later he'd introduced Diego to another horse doing another run, offering him a chance to invest his trafficking fee.

But before Chief Caieron was able to use the information, he had to wait for Andre to return. The ambush was six weeks later. Chief Caieron charged Andre for Diego's 8 kilos of coke, Luiz's 6000 ecstasy pills and for money-laundering.

Andre was sent to jail to await trial – a shocking and meteoric plunge from his glamour life. The loss of his status and his liberty hurt him badly, especially since it was his lust for sunsets and flying whimsically across the globe that first enticed him into drug trafficking.

When you get in the jail, it's like a bad dream, a nightmare. It takes weeks or months to go, ‘It's true, I'm here.' Because you get so paralysed, so shocked.

– Andre

With his sharp mind, Andre was never going to quietly submit to his fate. Late one Friday night, exactly 120 days after first being slammed into a cell, he quietly slipped out, thanks to a $50,000 payment his lawyer gave to the Minister of the Superior Court of Justice to get bail, bypassing the lower courts to avoid any chance of it being overturned.

This day, when I got out, everybody was fucking mad, the cops were pissed off and upset. My lawyer went to the jail about 10 pm, because he didn't want anybody around to see me – no media, because he's smart. If you go to the newspaper, you will draw the attention of other ministers. Just slip out.

But the director of the jail comes to me and says, ‘You are going free again because this country is a bullshit country. The Federal Police spent three years looking for you, three years to lock you up, now you pay this motherfucking lawyer, and you can go out – a big dealer like you back to the streets. I'm disgusted in my profession.' The guy is angry. Not angry personally with me, he was polite to me.

– Andre

Chief Caieron had also got the news, and hurriedly went to the jail to check the paperwork, to see if he could find a loophole or mistake to prevent Andre's release. Being late Friday night, it was too late to get the courts to do anything. Caieron was furious that his big fish had slipped away again and told him, ‘I'll catch you again, because I know you're a drug dealer, Andre.'

Andre felt they were arch-rivals, that Chief Caieron was jealous of his life. He taunted back, ‘Eh, calm down, man, I buy my freedom. You take your small gun and run after small thieves, people wearing sandals on the beach, pe de chinelo. I'm going back to my nice house, back with my girlfriend, and you still carry the small gun, running after pickpockets.'

I still feel really powerful because I went to the jail, stay four months, smoke some marijuana, make calls inside.

Still dealing?

Still dealing inside, and then pay to go out. When I go out, my life is back that same day. I have big money in my pocket; I have everything I want in my life. For sure I felt the impact when I got busted, but I still felt strong, powerful. They catch me, they put me there, but I'm smarter and can go out again, so I can deal drugs again outside, they can't catch me.

– Andre

Andre flew up north to Fortaleza, to avoid the risk of cops planting anything on him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

OPERATION PLAYBOY 2

Chief Caieron was angry – he'd worked hard to get evidence to put Andre away – but he'd had another win four weeks earlier, busting another playboy, dubbed ‘the baron of ecstasy', whom he could trumpet to the media as another big drug boss brought down by Operation Playboy.

And the baron of ecstasy was Dimitrius the Greek, who'd just flown in from Bali.

Several months earlier, not long after Rodrigo Gularte's bust, the Greek had moved into a rented house with Fox on the beach, directly in front of Rafael's mansion in Canggu. After a few big losses, the Greek was going to live in Bali for a year and invest in some runs with Rafael and Fox. He'd ameliorated the situation with Rafael by apologising for working behind his back, blaming someone else, and they were again good friends.

The Greek was also starting to live a healthy life, trying to get super-fit by cooking lots of vegetables and taking long bike rides, often 20 to 40 kilometres, through rice fields, up volcanoes, out to the sea by Tanah Lot temple, often with Rafael pedalling alongside. Rafael's eldest daughter also spent time exercising with the Greek.

But after a few months Dimitrius decided to return to Brazil. A week earlier, he'd watched his horse, Rodrigo, get sentenced to death. It was expected, and wasn't stopping him wanting to set up another run. Rafael advised him against going back. ‘It's too hot, man, stay here. You have a nice house, good lifestyle. What are you going to do there?' On the beach, other surfer friends were also encouraging him to stay. But he'd decided to leave – unaware somebody had already tipped off Chief Caieron.

With only a vague time frame of the Greek's arrival, some­time after Carnival, Chief Caieron doggedly staked out São Paulo airport. ‘We used to go to the airport every single day to check any kind of purchase, booking, boarding or check-in made for him – until the day we got that information . . . he's coming from Bali with a connection flight in Paris.'

Dimitrius was carrying €3000 from Rafael to give to Fox for a new project he was doing in Brazil, but nothing incriminating. Using his Greek and not his Brazilian passport, he departed Bali assuring Rafael he'd be okay.

But as he flew into São Paulo airport on the busy Air France flight, Chief Caieron and four other officers were waiting. They'd only seen the Greek in a photo, so it was possible he'd look different, and as the passengers disembarked and streamed past, they didn't see him. As the minutes ticked by, Chief Caieron started to fear they'd missed him. ‘It's the most long five minutes we've lived, 'cause lots of people came out from the aeroplane but not a sign of him. It's just a stress situation.'

Then, he saw him. Dimitrius was unwittingly walking towards him. He called out his name and Dimitrius looked up.

And that's the moment he heard, ‘You're under arrest.' When I was handcuffing him, he turned his neck, looked at me and asked, ‘Why are you doing this? What did I do?' I put my hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Think it over, my friend!

– Chief Caieron

Rafael found out his friend had been busted when his daughter saw it on the internet.

‘Papa, look, your friend got caught.' ‘What? Show me!' My daughter had been doing some exercise with Dimitrius, working out with him, and spotted it in the news.

– Rafael

. . . Dimitrius Christopoulos, 36, arrested during Operation Playboy by Federal Police. Christopoulos is accused of participating in a gang involved in international trafficking of narcotics, specifically to the Netherlands and Indonesia.

–
Federal Court for the Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina
and Paraná,
27 May 2005

Dimitrius, who also has Greek nationality, is accused of running a gang that in recent years has solicited young upper middle-class people often in extreme sports like surfing to transport cocaine to countries with high tourism flows in Europe and Asia.

The Federal Police said that the gang moved a lot of money, but did not know the exact amount. ‘We have arrested one of the largest organisations of drug trafficking in synthetic drugs in the country – a gang which operated using cocaine as a bargaining chip in Europe and Asia,' the delegate Ronald Magalhães said.

–
O Estado do Paraná,
20 February 2005

Chief Caieron had been watching Dimitrius for 16 months since his horse, Luis Cafiero, had been busted and snitched. Luis was the horse whose ‘fair complexion' – incongruous with his surfer cover story – had created suspicion, and instigated a customs search, which uncovered 7.3 kilos of cocaine between his surfboards. The small detail of no suntan had brought the horse crashing down and subsequently his boss too, proving that Rafael's usual pedantic scrutiny of a horse's look – ruffling hair, buying outfits – was worth the effort.

The defendant, Dimitrius Christopoulos was arrested in February this year, after being denounced by co-defendant Luis Alberto Faria Cafiero, caught with 7.3 kilos of cocaine trying to board a flight to Indonesia, with a stopover in South Africa.

–
Federal Court for the Rio Grande do Sul,
Santa Catarina and Paraná,
1 April 2005

Luis Alberto Faria Cafiero, 27, was arrested in São Paulo. ‘He did not have a surfer's typical tan,' a police official said.

–
Orlando Sentinel,
12 October 2003

Chief Caieron had also watched the bust of Rodrigo Gularte, revealing it had sped up their investigations. The Operation Playboy team had proof Dimitrius had bought tickets for Rodrigo and the two surfers he'd travelled with, and had paid for the operation.

In Dimitrius' confiscated electronic organiser, Chief Caieron hit the jackpot, finding more playboy names, including Rodrigo Gularte.

According to the Federal Police, it was the gang of Dimitrius Christo­poulos who sent to Indonesia the Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte, 32, recently sentenced to death by a court in that country for drug trafficking. Gularte was arrested in July last year, at the Jakarta International Airport, as he tried to enter the country with 6 kilos of cocaine hidden inside a surfboard . . .

The electronic organiser confirmed the connection between Christo­poulos and Rodrigo Gularte, arrested for trafficking and sentenced to death in Indonesia. Names of young people who live in Santa Catarina are also included on the organiser, some accompanied by the word ‘horse'.

–
Diary of Santa Catarina,
5 May 2005

Four days after the bust at São Paulo airport, police moved the Greek by private jet further south to Florianópolis – the Operation Playboy base. Regarded as a dangerous drug boss with mafia connections, his transfer, supervised by Chief Caieron, was turned into a major operation. All police, and their prisoner Dimitrius, were made to wear flak jackets.

They put him on the TV saying he was a big cartel guy. When they fly they put bulletproof vests with snipers like he was somebody dangerous. They made him out to be the biggest mafia. Bullshit, he was just a playboy, a young guy doing something. He cannot kill one cockroach. If you see his face, you never believe he do this type of job because he look like a mamma's boy, very polite, too polite sometimes, beautiful.

But it was funny because those fools, they make all this shit with snipers and private jet and then they come with the bill for the jet plane and make Dimitrius pay. He had money in the bank at that time . . . but anyway, all his money, everything in the bank, everything in his name, they were supposed to confiscate because it was money from drugs.

– Rafael

*

Meanwhile Chief Caieron wanted his other big fish back behind bars. Soon he'd have his chance. Andre was bored up north and flew back to Santa Catarina. He was still trafficking, without pause even in jail – ‘Money was running like water' – but he was being extra careful. When he got a call from one of his horses, asking for a job, he agreed, but insisted he wouldn't be going anywhere near the cocaine.

I don't feel the real, real danger around me, I still feel smart. Stupid!

– Andre

After a tip-off that Andre was doing another project, Chief Caieron put a surveillance team on Andre after he'd come back from Fortaleza.

We had information that Andre had gone back from Fortaleza and was planning to send a new shipment of narcotics to other countries. Because of that, the Police Chief told us to intensify the surveillance on him.

– Federal Police Agent, Macos Cezar Pitangui Pereira,
court statement

With Andre's 3 kilos of cocaine hidden in one of his kitesurfing kites, 26-year-old horse Marco Froes went to board a 7.30 am flight from Florianópolis to Fortaleza, north Brazil. But police busted him. Within 90 minutes, they were at Andre's house. Andre knew it was too fast for a random bust.

He was right; the Operation Playboy team had been watching every move. But Andre suspected it was more sinister, and that his horse, who'd come to him keenly asking to do this run, had been working a sting with the cops from the start – probably after being busted for something earlier.

In hindsight, there were many clues. The horse had called Andre's mobile twice the morning before his flight, despite Andre explicitly telling him not to. Andre was sure this was to prove the connection. ‘I didn't answer. I think, why is this mother­fucker calling me?' During the organisation of the run, he'd persistently phoned, asking Andre to come to help him pack. ‘All the time the guy tried to push me to get together with him, but I was always, stay away, stay away. I say, “I don't put my hand in this shit, man, I don't go to your place, some­body will deliver it to you.” '

Andre had also given the horse a cheque to buy his airline ticket, insisting he must change it at the petrol station first. But he didn't; he used it at a travel agent to pay for his flight. This was evidence later used against Andre. He could see that Chief Caieron had left nothing to chance; he'd pushed the horse to gather as much hard evidence as possible.

He hadn't wanted to lose Andre again. He didn't. Andre went straight back to jail on a Friday, 19 weeks after he'd walked free by buying bail.

We never had any kind of doubt that Andre would come back to this kind of activity. So, we restart our investigation and waited for his next move. We're right.

– Chief Caieron

It's like a personal game between me and this guy Fernando Caieron. This is a real playboy; the chief. This is personal between him and me.

– Andre

With the prisons massively overcrowded, Andre was sent to live in a shipping container with three other prisoners – another sharp, painful plunge from his jet-set lifestyle. Unsurprisingly, he quickly masterminded an escape plan. Four of the shipping containers shared an outdoor area with a barred roof. For hours every day, the doors to the containers were opened to the outdoor area. Guards sat up top peering down through the bars, but at shift change, there was an unsupervised 20 to 30 minutes. Andre soon had the prisoners sawing the bars, then gluing them back using soap, toothpaste and cigarette ash, before the next shift turned up.

Finally, after cutting four bars, they were ready to run. The plan was to wait for a rainy day, when the guards rarely went up top. On the first wet morning, three months after Andre had been banged up for the second time, he escaped with 11 others. They climbed up and out, then jumped and ran for their lives. An unlucky guard turned up as they were fleeing over the top and a big inmate punched his face, toppling him off the roof of the container.

Reginaldo is a fucking big guy, just pow, punch the guard in the face and he falls down from the top.

– Andre

The twelve escapees ran out and through the jungle, with guards shooting with machineguns, and chasing after them with dogs and on horses.

When I jump the guard starts to shoot with a machinegun. We are running, running, running to the favelas, 2 kilometres. And after 30 minutes we get to this house, 12 people escape . . . woohoo, great, have a big party – drugs, girls, dinner. For me the party was not that great, because I don't like to stay in the favelas, it's a different class of people, but for the other guys, wow, party, girls. And the police can't come into the favelas.

Why?

Because these people would shoot them. There are many thousands of small houses and most of the people who live there are robbers, drug dealers, all criminals, all kinds. And if the police try to come, these people will shoot with big guns, bang, bang, bang.

– Andre

Andre stayed in Brazil, still dealing, hiding out and living well, but the image he'd created for himself and relished, as a respectable and high-flying entrepreneur, was now a shattered relic. Chief Caieron had made sure his story blitzed the news.

According to the Federal Police, Andre Mendes is associated with much of the cocaine trafficked from Brazil to Europe, where it is traded for synthetic drugs like ecstasy and LSD, which are brought to Brazil by mules.

–
The News,
19 November 2004

In Brazil, they call me the biggest exporter of cocaine from South Brazil to Europe. This is fucking stupid, because the people who put it in containers are ten times bigger. They catch me, and try to make me like an example for the society. The guy did university, the guy has money, the big restaurant, but now he's in jail because he's a drug dealer. It's fucking bullshit.

– Andre

Andre was on the run for five months before his lawyer convinced him to turn himself in for sentencing. He'd advised Andre that, in absentia, the judge was required to give the maximum sentence but would probably give a small penalty if he surrendered.

My lawyer tells me, ‘If you show your face, you have a chance to get a really, really small sentence.' So, I go to my lawyer's office and say, ‘I'm here.' They give me 15 years for one crime, 15 years for another crime, and 7 for another crime – 37 years.