Major Irish drug gangs have been colluding with the Italian mafia and Dutch crime groups in supplying a booming cocaine trade in Europe, according to an international study.
The report by UN and EU drug agencies documents a “new phenomenon” of increased cooperation between European drug traffickers and high-level cocaine brokers.
As the Irish Examiner reports, it cites the example of collusion involving Irish, Italian, Bosnian and, Dutch traffickers in Dubai, which has been the base of the Kinahan crime cartel in recent years.
This relates to what has been described in media reports as a “super cartel” comprising Kinahan boss Daniel Kinahan, Dutch crime lord Ridouan Taghi, Camorra don Raffaele Imperiale, and Bosnia chief Edin Gacanin.
The report says in such collusions, the gangs “pool their capital to jointly purchase larger quantities to maximise profits” with the Camorra particularly prominent in participating in “criminal consortia”.
The study, Cocaine Insights 1, was written by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and Europol, the EU policing agency.
Greater share
It said Irish drug networks along with other national gangs are gaining a “greater share” of the booming cocaine market in Europe.
The report says that repeated multi-tonne seizures of cocaine, both in Latin America and in Europe, highlight the “significantly increased” supply of cocaine to Europe:
“Highly sophisticated drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) operating on a global scale orchestrate the large-scale wholesale supply of cocaine to Europe.”
The report says contemporary DTOs are comprised of complex networks of contacts relying on representatives present in source and destination countries.
It says these networks are trafficking “unprecedented amounts” of cocaine from Latin America to Europe.
These developments include an expansion of the presence of European DTOs in source regions in Latin America and of Latin American criminal networks in key destination markets in western and central Europe.
While traditional Italian mafia-type groups, such as ’Ndrangheta and Camorra continue to play a leading role in supplying cocaine from South America, it says Balkan gangs are increasingly present, along with Dutch, British, and Spanish gangs.
It adds Irish gangs are also present at the source countries: “Less prominent cocaine trafficking DTOs also originate from Ireland, Poland, and Serbia.”
