The Vampire Ship: The seizure of Europe's largest heroin shipment

https://newrepublic.com/article/159252/vampire-ship

by NKosmatos • 6 years ago

188 87 6 years ago

sakisv• 6 years ago

Wow, I never expected this to receive any kind of international attention, let alone see it on HN. If this doesn't make me proud of my home country, I don't know what will /s.

Given that the witnesses in this case have a tendency to die, and the DAs that get assigned this case have a tendency to resign, flee the country, or just drop the case, I'd be worried if I were the author.

However, I've got to admit, this entire case and the mafia-like way it's playing out is quite impressive and quite a first for Greece. Sure, as a country we had our fair share of corruption, but I think this takes things to a whole new level.

ttul3• 6 years ago

Criminalization of drugs enables corruption on a massive scale. I do wonder how much the world would change if there were and end to drug prohibition.

Not only would states receive tax revenue from the sale of drugs, but

- drug users would not be poisoned by additives and substitutes like fentanyl

- there would be one less reason to corrupt the police, government officials, and the judiciary

- money laundering would basically end — I mean, what else do you need money laundering for? Heists?

The subtle yet pervasive negative effects of drug prohibition are things we have become so used to that we can scarce imagine the world without them.

ptsneves• 6 years ago

I also agree. I hate drug trafiking with a passion. Nations are utterly destroyed by the concept of illegal drugs. Legalize it to dry the swamp.

Pirgo4• 6 years ago

I'm not disagreeing with you, but regarding money laundering, it's not like drug trafficking and heists are only illegal streams of money which needs to be cleaned. Trafficking, prostitution, illegal gambling, depositing of toxic waste, bribe money, cyber crime, financial malversations etc.

ReptileMan• 6 years ago

Criminalization of drugs enables corruption on a massive scale. I do wonder how much the world would change if there were and end to drug prohibition.

Singapore have gone to the extreme other end and seems to be doing fine. It's not the prohibition, but the way it is enforced.

baybal2• 6 years ago

Criminalization of drugs enables corruption on a massive scale.

Criminalization of enter a noun enables corruption on a massive scale.

macintux• 6 years ago

Coincidentally there's active discussion on the topic of drug prohibition here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24533041

wwarner• 6 years ago

There are a lot of 'ifs' here. Especially iffy -- the tax windfall creates its own perverse incentives. Drug abuse is bad for you, no amount game theory or legal hair-splitting will change that.

drran3• 6 years ago

Why not just legalize corruption? No corruption — no problems you mentioned above.

thefounder4• 6 years ago

I'm for legalisation of "most" drugs but I can't stop thinking that paying taxes would be the last thing most heroin users will have in mind.

We also have the recent opioids crisis. It didn't work out very well.

You must realise that there is also cost for everything including legalisation(i.e more people will get hooked on (hard) drugs).

antman• 6 years ago

A whole new level? This case? Is this better than that other case where there where convictions all over the world and in Greece instead the DA was indicted by the current government with the police escort removed and consequently the house broken into and Hard Disk stolen? I mean that case that also included lost witnesses such as the one who was trapped and burned in his Porsche Jeep and the other one who suffered the same fate with his BMW. His BMW motorbike! The country that has the governing party with the largest deficit per capita for any country in the world supported by media that survived by being forgiven huge deficits while other competing media perished? The same people had the secret services hunt a journalist by falsifying documents a case for which they were convicted a case only covered by the paper the reporter works for

This is the standard state of things. A cleptocracy being run by the same surnames throughout the years, this case simply got covered by a foreign media.

tomohawk• 6 years ago

Interesting topic, but highly sensationalized writing.

But at just the time ... authorities back in Piraeus were investigating Marinakis and three of his associates on claims they set up a criminal organization that financed the trafficking and sale of narcotics. Marinakis also denies these charges. His potential connection to the Noor One, if it is proved out in court, would mean that one of Greece’s most powerful men may have climbed to global prominence on the back of a titanic heroin deal. And if he had been in on the ground-floor planning for the Noor One deal, he managed to profit off the Noor One where so many others lost their fortunes or lives.

That's a lot of ifs. But, that doesn't stop the writer form plowing right along.

KorfmannArno2• 6 years ago

Did you continue to read the article completely?

gumby2• 6 years ago

What a fascinating story!

Loved this:

To hide the identity of the original informant, the police also arrested him or her; at the same time, they allowed others with known ties to the operation to escape. “It was important to make it unclear who’d talked and who hadn’t,” an officer told me.

Zak• 6 years ago

It's my understanding that it's fairly common for police to arrest informants in major criminal organizations and make a show of pretending to try to prosecute them for exactly that reason.

gumby2• 6 years ago

Mixing it in with the release is clever opsec. I have always loved stories like that since I read “the man who never was” when I was 11 or so.

sasaf5• 6 years ago

This reminds me of another fascinating trafficking gone-wrong story, in Azores, when a drifting yacht loaded with half a ton of cocaine washed ashore at the island changing life there for many years [0].

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/10/blow-up-how-...

redisman2• 6 years ago

I was just listening to Darknet diaries about some sellers getting caught. What a colossal waste of resources all of this cat and mouse game is.

tacocataco2• 6 years ago

The resources arent being spent to keep people from doing drugs.

mensetmanusman• 6 years ago

Thoughts:

-We should legalize drugs so that criminal organizations actually have to drop dead

-If the government is in control, will they get corrupted as easily as private drug dealers do?

-Do the ‘legitimate’ business elites of the S&P ever mingle with the arguably wealthier elites of the criminal underworld?

redisman2• 6 years ago

If the government is in control, will they get corrupted as easily as private drug dealers do?

We already have all the data points - recreational (liquor and marijuana licenses) seems to work well and then you have the pharmaceutical companies

Kosirich• 6 years ago

Really realty good read. I expect a novel in the future and a Netflix adaptation.

Some notes: 1) "As the Noor One was approaching the island on its way to Elefsina, he said, a smaller vessel had swung past it, picked up a ton of its heroin, then went up the Adriatic toward ports near Serbia." - What ports would that be? (answer: Serbia doesn't have ports in Adriatic)

2) “I only remember him because he was really fat otherwise if he would be a normal man he probably wouldn’t get my attention,” he said. “I repeat, he was REALLY FAT." I laughed out loud on this one :D

3) Deaths that are not mentioned here are those of product users. I mean seizure affect price which affect what heroin gets cut with. Users get use to diluted batch and then when a fresh shipment hits the market it catches them off guard with it's potency which leads to overdose. This is at least what I was told as the reason of death of some people I knew died from it.

4) A significant amount of cocaine has been seized recently. By significant I mean 1 ton! Guys are Croatian, none of them had priors.

https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/13112-spanish-police-seize-cr...

As in OP's story, deaths of those involved will surely follow.

KorfmannArno2• 6 years ago

1) "near Serbia", so most probably not in Serbia, but probably in Greece.

Pirgo4• 6 years ago

Regarding 4): Those croatian guys are just mules basicaly, 3 guys from seaside town proficient in boat sailing. Two younger guys in mid 20's and main guy who fell into some financial business / mortgage problems. They are not even part of any criminal organization, they were just hired because of their sailing skills.

henrikschroder• 6 years ago

What ports would that be?

Anything in Bosnia or Croatia, and then through the Serbian parts of Bosnia up to Serbia itself.

Pirgo4• 6 years ago

Bosnia basicaly doesn't have ports (besides Neum, which is not realy practical), so either Albania / Montenegro / Croatia. Most likely Albania - Kosovo - Serbia route, since it's already established heroin smuggling route.

ardit332• 6 years ago

Most likely Montenegro, since it is easy to move to serbia from there (plus there are serbians that live there), and the country is going through some election transition period, so things might slip through easily.

NKosmatos2• 6 years ago

That’s what I thought when I read the story, it would make a good book/film. Keep in mind that many Greeks (myself included) haven’t read all these details in any Greek newspaper ;-)

notdang• 6 years ago

In this story:

heroin would be diluted with more than five tons of marble dust from a quarry on nearby Mount Pentelikon

heroin diluted with marble? it this real?

greenyoda• 6 years ago

A search turned up this example of cocaine being diluted with marble powder:

High concentrations of Al, Ca, Fe, Mg, Mn, and P were found, indicating that adulterants such as gypsum, marble powder, limestone, cement, and others must be used to increase the profitability of the illicit drug market.

http://static.sites.sbq.org.br/jbcs.sbq.org.br/pdf/2020-0204...

Diluting a very expensive product with something very cheap and selling it for the price of the pure product would certainly be a way of increasing profits.

From what I've read, many overdoses happen when users who are used to diluted heroin get hold of pure heroin, ending up with a much bigger dose than expected.

The paper I cited notes another risk for cocaine users: "Diluting substances such as talc, plaster, lime and chalk, used to increase the volume of the drug, are not absorbed and can cause chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, such as silicosis".

deepsun• 6 years ago

In Russia (Saint Petersburg) two amateur drug dealers were charged for police murder because they didn't know they should dilute their shit, and a policeman died after using the seized goods, because they were too pure.

arkis222• 6 years ago

would you go to an actual port if you're hauling a ton of heroin?

toomuchtodo2• 6 years ago

Depends if the port was in on it, who you’ve paid off, etc.

CalChris• 6 years ago

Serbia and Montenegro are a federated country and Montenegro has a coastline.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbia_and_Montenegro

Paradigma11• 6 years ago

In 2006, Montenegro seceded from the union, following an independence referendum which narrowly passed, leading to the full independence of Serbia and Montenegro.

strictnein• 6 years ago

Amazon has a series (that I think was originally an Italian show) called ZeroZeroZero that tracks a shipment of cocaine from Mexico on its way to Italy. Not a bad show, with some good music (sounds like a Reznor/Ross soundtrack, but it's not), but it is a very slow burn. Eight episodes, but it probably should have been 5 or 6 max.

Coincidentally, one of the criminal elements in the show are the "Vampires".

locusm• 6 years ago

Thats a show worth a watch - Aussies can get it for free with SBS OnDemand. The Das Boot series on SBS is also excellent.

micky_t• 6 years ago

"Alexander Clapp September 28, 2020"

Did anyone else notice this publication date?

NKosmatos2• 6 years ago

Yeah, probably a typo but nevertheless funny.

coolgeek• 6 years ago

Many print publications use the date of the print version in the online version as well.

For example, NYT Magazine articles sometimes publish early, online, with a future date - the print date - in the URL and the copy.

This may or may not be the case here, but it's been a common practice since articles have been online

aschatten• 6 years ago

”Weeks after acquiring the Noor One, he outfitted it with a Togolese flag—thereby granting the ship and anything that happened aboard it immunity from most international jurisdictions”

Can anyone explain how/why Togolese flag give immunity?

codyb• 6 years ago

I was curious about that to. Togo appears to be a very small country on the Gulf of Guinea in Africa.

Maybe it is to maritime laws what the Cayman Islands are to financial laws? Secretive, lax, and with a lack of extradition and cooperation treaties?

Maritime law seems pretty interesting, and apparently you can get by with quite a bit by registering vessels in locations like that.

onetimemanytime• 6 years ago

Some facts:

--In so-so countries as far as law and order, you can get votes for x party and if they win, you are untouchable unless DEA and the likes put pressure. You will pay bribes to the political capos to continue but no cop will dare to touch you.

--You just open your wallet and contract killers will do the job. Or you can write off old debts they may have. Especially in the Balkans

grumple• 6 years ago

Wow. What a story.

And Evangelos Marinakis, the (billionaire) magnate looks like he’s going to buy his way out of any punishment by buying up papers and news stations.

This sort of rampant profiteering from criminal enterprise is really bad for all nations of the world. What’s the point in living by the rules when there’s so much profit to be made by breaking them? Not just with this case, but all over the world, even in the US... until powerful men are bound by law, unrest and criminality are incentivized. The real lesson we’ve learned so far? Go for bigger scores.

The Vampire Ship: The seizure of Europe's largest heroin shipment

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