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INVESTIGATION: Emanuel Macron's boss's ties to cocaine trafficking

2023-04-03 11:08:57Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

INVESTIGATION: Emanuel Macron's boss's ties to cocaine trafficking

As MSC became a dominant force in global trade, it also became a preferred cocaine trafficking channel for Balkan gangs. Suspected of having favored him by the Ministry of Finance, in Bercy, or even by the Secretary General of the Elysee, Alexis Kohler (who had entered his service as finance director in 2016-2017), was indicted last September 2021 for "conflict of interest".

In 2018, the anti-corruption NGO Anticor filed a legal complaint against Mr. Kohler for breaking conflict of interest rules on contracts awarded to MSC in 2010 and 2011, AFP news agency reports.

"Elements revealed by the press suggest that he [Mr. Kohler] took advantage of these positions [in government] to protect MSC's interests,” Anticor says.

The case was dismissed the following year, but in 2020, Anticor filed a complaint, which usually triggers an investigation by an investigating judge, AFP reports.

Below is the investigation of the American Bloomberg agency on December 16 of last year, which shows how cocaine traffickers infiltrated the Italian-Swiss shipping company owned by Alexis Kohler's cousins.

During the summer of 2019, Claudio Bozzo, Chief Operating Officer of MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Co), traveled 6,000 km from Geneva to Washington DC, for a meeting with US Customs and Border Protection. He had been sent by MSC's owner, an 82-year-old billionaire named Gianluigi Aponte, to manage a crisis.

A few months earlier, more than 100 agents had boarded one of MSC's ships, the Gayane, as it entered the US port of Philadelphia for what was supposed to be a quick stop on its way to Rotterdam. Below deck, hidden in containers filled with wine and nuts, officers discovered nearly 20 tons of cocaine, worth a billion dollars. The ensuing investigation showed that more than a third of the crew – all MSC employees – were involved in transporting large quantities of cocaine from the speedboat at night while the ship was sailing on the high seas. outside South America. This is the largest maritime drug seizure in US history.

"Largest maritime drug seizure in US history"

Because the crime was so massive and brazen, authorities took the extraordinary step of seizing not only the cocaine, but also the Gayane itself, a 300-meter-long vessel worth over $100 million.

When he met with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the Ronald Reagan Building, Bozzo apologized for the incident and said the crew's actions surprised him, according to a person familiar with the matter. He praised the growth of MSC from humble beginnings to become the world's largest shipping company and impressed upon officials how seriously the Aponte family takes the responsibility of managing a fleet that represents nearly 20% of all the world's trade. sea ​​containers.

For the American authorities, the ignorance of the company "didn't drink water". A Bloomberg Businessweek investigation found that years before the Gayane inspection, law enforcement authorities in several countries were monitoring MSC ships and crews. US authorities had not only followed the Gayanelong before it entered US waters, but they had also boarded and searched several other MSC ships as part of a wider investigation into an international cocaine-trafficking ring that had infiltrated the company. of maritime transport. Through data gathered during these inspections, as well as information gathered in Eastern Europe, they identified a powerful Balkan cartel as the source of these massive shipments.

MSC, "the cocaine smuggling empire"

US and European powers have also concluded that the cartel, which controls more than half of the cocaine flowing into Europe, has been infiltrating MSC crews for a decade, using its workforce and ships to help building a cocaine smuggling empire. "We certainly didn't see MSC as a victim in this case," says William McSwain, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, who presided over Gayane's case until he left office in January 2021.

The MSC and the US government are now engaged in a legal battle that has been fought largely behind closed doors. Customs officials pressured the company to pay more than $700 million in fines, according to multiple law enforcement sources who spoke on condition of anonymity for nonpublic administrative proceedings. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is preparing a civil case in which they argue that MSC, as the operator of the Gayane, is responsible for drug trafficking and should forfeit the vessel or a significant portion of its value. While MSC admits record amounts of cocaine were found aboard its ship, it disputes key aspects of the government's version of events and claims it was a victim of traffickers, not an accomplice.

"We are not mandated, equipped or trained to deal with dangerous organized crime groups," said Giles Broom, MSC spokesman.

An MSC spokesman, Giles Broom, says the company has always taken drug trafficking seriously, but the Gayane incident "revealed a new level of security threat that we and, as far as we know, the container shipping industry were not yet exposed to." ready to face". Today, he says, MSC is considered "by far the industry leader in the fight against smuggling." However, “there is a limit to what can be expected from a company and civilians doing their job: We are not a law enforcement agency and we are not mandated, staffed or trained to take with dangerous organized criminal groups".

Crews 'infiltrations by Balkan gangs'

All shipping companies operating between South America and Europe are at risk of falling prey to cocaine traffickers. But MSC is a particularly attractive target, according to authorities. It dominates circuits suspected of being cocaine highways, mainly those used to transport fresh fruit and vegetables from South America to northern Europe. It is also the world's largest employer of seafarers from Montenegro, the country of origin of the Balkan cartel. Years before the capture of the Gayane, European police had warned the MSC that its crews had infiltrators. However, steps taken by management to mitigate the problem have failed, according to officials on both sides of the Atlantic.

This situation has frustrated law enforcement and customs authorities, as record amounts of cocaine pour into ports around the world, especially in Europe. US prosecutors are not alleging that MSC executives participated in or benefited from the trafficking, but they are trying to learn more about flaws in the company's recruitment and security protocols, according to two senior officials involved. American and European investigators say they always come back to one central question: Why have criminal organizations apparently been able to control key operations aboard some of the company's ships for so long? "The influence of drug traffickers within this company is clearly something that, from day one, has caught the interest of the U.S. government," said Robert Perez, CBP Assistant Commissioner from 2018 to July 2021.

MSC: a self-established family company

Mediterranean Shipping Co. is located in a quiet area of ​​Geneva. Even in a notoriously isolated sector, the inner workings of the MSC are particularly difficult to decipher. It is one of the few major transport companies that is not listed on the stock exchange. It operates a cruise line that publishes its annual results, but its freight business does not publish financial statements. Mr Aponte also owns a network of hundreds of chain entities overseeing ferry operators, yacht manufacturers, shipping terminals and even a private island in the Bahamas.

Aponte is elegant, with gray hair, icy eyes and an aristocratic chest. He remains the representative of the MSC group. His son, Diego, is president. His daughter, Alexa, is the finance director. Two years ago, after the capture of Gayane, he appointed Soren Toft, a long-time executive at rivals AP Moller-Maersk A/S, as managing director of MSC's cargo business.

The family likes to say that seawater runs through their veins, citing the 17th-century maritime documents that bear their name. Mr. Aponte was born in the small town of Sant'Agnello, on the Bay of Naples; his family transported goods and passengers across the waters of the bay. He also became a sailor, training as a ship captain and working under Achille Lauro, former mayor of Naples and shipping magnate. He sailed on "vaporettes" that transported wealthy tourists to nearby islands such as Capri and Ischia. It was during one of these trips that Aponte met his future wife, Rafaela Diamant, the daughter of a Swiss banker.

It is rare for a shipping company to be heavily fined for drugs found on board its ships. In the United States, when fines are imposed, regulators often allow the carrier to negotiate them. But in Europe, such fines are rarely imposed. Although shipping companies are subject to international safety requirements, customs and law enforcement authorities have little power to hold them accountable. All this has allowed the shipping industry, the main driver of globalization, to escape major consequences as it becomes increasingly involved in drug trafficking. Until Gayane went to Philadelphia in the summer of 2019.

Serbian, Montenegrin and Croatian seafarers in the MSC

In 2013, other European countries began to suspect that the cartel had found a way to interfere with MSC's recruitment operations. The findings of their investigations were considered highly sensitive, but were sometimes made public. In November, the Montenegrin Police Directorate published a 100-page report on organized crime in the Balkans, part of which was devoted to cocaine trafficking. According to this report, the gangs in the region "have developed networks of temporary members, which generally consist of seafarers from Montenegro, Serbia and Croatia, who are mainly employed on the container ships of the MSC company".

The following year, Spanish police began tracking a gang of Montenegrin and Serbian traffickers who were arranging to transport cocaine shipments across the Atlantic on MSC ships and their crews leaving the coast. the europeans. Court documents detail how the group's contacts in South America controlled "a large fleet of sailors employed on MSC ships" who could help transport large quantities of cocaine to northern Europe. Another report of the Police Directorate of Montenegro, from 2015, shows that the main way of smuggling cocaine for organized criminal groups in the Balkans remains "the container ship of the MSC company, which covers the route South America-Western Europe".

Around 2016, officers from the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK contacted MSC management, under the direction of the Dutch police. They have given the company some details gathered during the investigation and asked for help in curbing the traffic. According to Jan Janse, Chief of Police for the Port of Rotterdam, whose team helped raise awareness, MSC learned that the Balkan Cartel had used a recruitment agency in the region to bring infiltrated seafarers aboard its ships.

The company also received a warning. "We told them what we had seen. And we told them to stop it," says Janse. And if that wasn't stopped, we told them we risked doing what the United States later did, which was confiscating their ships. "

It is unclear exactly what MSC did with this information. Mr Broom, the spokesman, says the company has no record of such a meeting in Geneva in 2016. 'MSC has been meeting for many years with customs and police authorities to discuss the dangers of drug trafficking as part of our cooperation in many countries", he specifies.

Mr. Janse believes the company took extra security measures and changed the recruitment agency it used in the Balkans. The Dutch drug police began to see fewer cuts and the technique eventually disappeared almost entirely. But smugglers have become increasingly sophisticated.

Initiation of investigations

The main investigative arm of the US Department of Homeland Security, called Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), has begun working with European partners to analyze major cocaine seizures, particularly those made in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam. HSI agents mitigated data collected by customs authorities on shipping documents and ship movements in South America. They learned that while cocaine destined for Europe came mainly from the east coast of South America, particularly Brazil, the trend had begun to change in recent years. Now, most of the cocaine destined for Europe came from ports in and around the west coast, such as Callao in Peru and Guayaquil in Ecuador.

Initially, investigators assumed that the drug was smuggled using traditional methods, such as hiding next to legitimate packaged goods in warehouses or collection points, or the "blind hook," in which accomplices enter containers and hide the cocaine in them. Beginning in 2017, HSI spent months trying to uncover the traffickers' methods, first in Colombia and then in Panama, according to two people familiar with the investigation, but agents kept hitting dead ends.

HSI, along with US customs officers, began boarding cargo approaching Philadelphia, examining crew quarters, engine rooms, and even a ship's propeller shaft, mostly without success. But the searches also allowed them to isolate crew members l in an effort to conduct searches aboard the ships, according to a former senior US official.

In 2018, investigators concluded that traffickers were not using traditional smuggling methods at all. Instead, they were using Balkan crew members on board MSC freighters to load the drugs while the ships were at sea. Investigators did everything they could to penetrate this network, intercepting communications and planting informants. Eventually they got the information they needed.

How cartels infiltrate the MSC

When Aleksandar Kavaja began planning his next voyage aboard MSC Gayane in the spring of 2019, his hometown of Tivar in Montenegro was a well-established recruiting ground for the Balkan Cartel. Locals say it wasn't hard to guess which sailors might have been involved in the cocaine trade – they were probably the ones who owned Maseratis and new homes overlooking the Adriatic.

Bar, a small old town dotted with beaches and olive groves, is home to the largest seaport in Montenegro, where the MSC company is omnipresent. It is a stopover for the company's cruise line and MSC also operates a crew training center in the north – one of four it operates globally, with others in India, Italy and Ukraine. Out of 6,000 Montenegrin seafarers, about 2,250 work for MSC, according to Mimo Drashkovic, head of the maritime management study program at the Faculty of Maritime Studies in Kotor.

Kavaja was one of them. He grew up on the outskirts of Tivar, on a farm that has been in his family for generations. Since Alexander's grandfather was a sailor, his family was thrilled to see him graduate and get a job at MSC. He would continue to receive a salary of about 4,500 euros a month ($4,750), more than ten times what his parents earned. In 2015, at the age of 21, Aleksandri started going to sea.

Over the next few years, he sailed on at least four MSC ships – Lorena, Diana, Deila, Erica – performing electrical installations and repairing electrical equipment when the ships went to South Korea, Panama, Malta and other distant places. He didn't like his job or the months he spent away from his family. “He's not a sailor at heart,” his mother said. But he had vowed to support the family financially.

One day in mid-April 2019, Kavaja was having lunch at a coffee bar. He would board the Gayane in the port of Antwerp in a few days, for what would be his sixth voyage aboard an MSC ship. After finishing the meal, he is approached by a man he does not know. "We know who you are, we know who your family is," the man told him, according to US court documents. "We know you will be leaving on this boat in five days."

The man was holding a "narco" cell phone, as prosecutors have called it in court documents, and told Kavaja that he had a choice. He could either pick up the phone and agree to follow orders or risk his and his family's safety. If he accepted, he would receive $50,000, or nearly a year's salary. He picked up the phone.

"Newark's biggest drug bust in 25 years"

Two months before Kavaja set foot in Gayane, narcotics officers were tipped off that another MSC ship, the Carlotta, had cocaine on board, according to a person familiar with the investigation. The ship was en route to the port of Newark, New Jersey, which MSC sometimes uses as a port of call for Philadelphia. When Carlotta arrived, officers searched the vessel and found 3,200 pounds (1.6 tons) of cocaine hidden in a container of dried fruit. It was Newark's biggest drug bust in 25 years.

The quantity of the shipment immediately attracted attention, and reinforcements were assigned to the investigation by HSI and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). New York Homeland Security agents began working with the DEA's International Division, which had been tracking the Balkan cartel for years from its origins in Croatia.

The Newark raid yielded new clues. Investigators collected data on some of Carlotta's refrigerated containers, which tracked sudden changes in internal temperature. These records indicated that some containers were opened while the ship was en route. "It was very clear that something was going on at sea," said a person with knowledge of the investigation.

During a search of another MSC cargo ship in the spring, officers found a small two-way radio in a crew member's cabin, according to a person familiar with the find. The radio was using a frequency typical of small ships, and the captain told investigators there was no reason the device was on board commercial cargo. HSI questioned the crew member, originally from the Balkans, but he was not arrested. During further searches, investigators found evidence that someone aboard the ship had cut a wire, bypassing a device that limits the weight the small cranes on the stern could lift.

Half a ton of cocaine on board MSC Desiree

A second major seizure occurred in the United States on March 19, 2022, this time aboard the MSC Desiree in Philadelphia. Customs officers found more than half a ton of cocaine, the largest amount seized in Philadelphia in nearly two decades. Officers eventually identified at least four MSC ships whose crew members they believe were involved in cocaine smuggling: Carlotta and Desiree, as well as Avni and Gayane.

American agents were not the only ones to find drugs. In April 2022, Peruvian authorities discovered 2.4 tons of cocaine in 64 suitcases and bags aboard the Carlotta, which had apparently begun transporting drugs again. Panamanian authorities later found 1.3 tons of cocaine during a search of the Avni (U.S. investigators had also suspected cocaine aboard the ship and had planned to search it in Philadelphia, according to two people familiar with the investigation, but the Panamanians beat them to it). that).

The role of crew members on ships gave traffickers a considerable advantage. The sailors had access to critical data, such as the location and destination of containers, which investigators say allowed them to select boxes in which to hide large quantities of cocaine and were less likely to trigger a customs check once they arrived at port. This presented a major challenge to US authorities, as drugs could be found almost anywhere in the mountain of containers on the ship.

Searching for a fully loaded ship is difficult, so rare. Holders are tight and containers are difficult to access. Officers have purchased special oxygen monitoring equipment in case they have to go below deck, where rusting iron can lower oxygen levels. They assembled a team of drug-sniffing dogs and got cameras that could be inserted into a loaded container to find cocaine.

Officers also began quietly notifying the partners they would need to conduct a full search of the vessel: the U.S. Coast Guard, Delaware State Police, Philadelphia City Police and even an emergency response team from trained in marine techniques. All they needed was last minute information that would tell them which ship to look for. When Gayane arrived in Philadelphia in June, everything was in place.

Tons of drugs were loaded on the open sea

As Gayane sailed south from Panama, Kavaja's phone rang. When he picked it up, according to his lawyer, a man told him to go to the upper deck. Kavaja obeyed and found other crew members waiting for him.

Court documents show three other people were recruited in Montenegro before boarding the ship. Kavaja's role was to call traffickers transporting cocaine by speedboat and give them Gayane's location so they could find him at night. He also recruited other people to help him move the heavy loads. In total, at least 8 of the 22 crew members on board Gayane – 6 from Montenegro, 2 from Samoa – took care of the job. Each of them was likely to earn $50,000 or much more, depending on their role.

While the Gayanewa was off the coast of Peru, according to court documents, a Montenegrin sailor named Bosko Markovic helped round up the crew, who were waiting on deck along with four men wearing ski masks. Mr. Markovic was the ship's first officer, one rank below the captain and responsible for cargo and deck crew. A speedboat stopped next to the big ship. Another Montenegrin, Ivan Durasevic, the ship's second captain and third in command, used a small crane and lifted giant nets filled with black sports bags and packets of cocaine. Once the nets were on deck, other crew members pushed the drugs into a place on the ship. The men entered a series of containers, cutting the security seal off each one. After hiding the cocaine inside, they resealed the containers with a false seal, with the MSC logo. Sometimes they had to cut steel cables or bend metal railings to get the cocaine in, then use solder and paint to hide the damage.

Over the following nights, as the Gayane sailed south, the vessel was followed by at least six speedboats, according to court documents. He never stopped moving forward. He didn't even appear to be slowing down, according to law enforcement officials. The work was done while the ship was moving through the open sea, which is an incredible feat of seamanship.

In June, Gayane made her southernmost stop, at a small port in Concepción Bay, near Coronel, Chile, and began her return voyage. When the ship reached the coast of Peru heading back north to Panama, it was approached by at least eight other boats. Night loading and unloading operations have resumed.

On the afternoon of June 16, the Gayane was in US territorial waters, bound for Philadelphia. While entering Delaware Bay, the Coast Guard contacted the captain and asked him to go to an area called Big Stone Anchorage. Merchant ships usually stop here to wait for a river captain to be released to sail a local channel. But as Gayane closed in, three patrol boats and a helicopter boarded the ship, bringing a team of law enforcement officers to Jacob's ladder.

Guyana blockade: a week of searching for 20 tons of cocaine

Some agents gathered the crew on the quay, while others headed to the bridge to find the ship's blueprints. The search for drugs began with the upper deck containers while the Gayane was still in the bay. On June 17, around 3 a.m., the ship arrived at the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal in Philadelphia, within sight of the Walt Whitman Bridge. More than 100 officers were waiting. They thought there was cocaine on board, but they didn't know where. A team began taking samples from the crew's hands to detect traces of drugs. Some of them have been positive.

Around 7 a.m., as the sun was rising over the bay, officers made their first find: a pile of bagged packages inside a shipping container. . CBP port manager Joseph Martella was on vacation the day Gayane arrived in Philadelphia, but he was looking intently at his phone and drove to the port. Shortly after 10 o'clock, a second container filled with cocaine was discovered. Martella then takes the unusual step of unloading and physically inspecting each of the ship's 4,000 containers.

After nearly a week of work, the government searched through shipments of wine, dried nuts and used batteries to identify seven containers containing cocaine. Customs officers spent days weighing the drugs, counting the packages and recording all the evidence. At one point, as the officers rushed to complete their task, they looked around and saw white powder everywhere, Martella recalled. One of the officers realized that it was no ordinary powder and asked everyone to disguise themselves.

In total, the loot included more than 15,000 bricks of cocaine, weighing nearly 20 tons and with an estimated value of over $1 billion. The authorities were shocked not only by the amount of drugs, but also by the audacity of the operation. The ship's maneuver leader, the first officer, was responsible for the crew's schedule, which allowed the co-conspirators to be on duty at the same time. Additionally, he and the second officer had access to critical information about the containers, according to court records. (Gayane's captain was questioned by a grand jury but never arrested or charged).

Embarrassment of MSC

On June 18, two days after the Gayane inspection, the MSC issued a statement. "MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company has become aware of reports of an incident at the Port of Philadelphia where US authorities intercepted illegal cargo. MSC takes this matter very seriously and thanks the authorities for identifying any suspected abuse of its services. Unfortunately, shipping and logistics companies are hit by traffic problems from time to time.”

Over the next ten days, officers continued to interrogate the crew members, who remained sequestered on the ship. They took the sailors out one by one and interrogated them for hours to piece together the operation. At first, the story told by the crew, that he had lifted five elephants' worth of cocaine from the skiff as the ship sped by, seemed far-fetched. But prosecutors obtained a warrant to seize the ship's voyage data recorder, which contains information about the ship and its movements, and in which they found radar images showing various points where the small boats approached Guyana and remained in its height, according to three officials.

Seizing a ship is an extreme measure, but revelations that crew members were involved in the trafficking of such a large amount of cocaine have emboldened the authorities. On the morning of July 4, CBP officers boarded the Gayane and issued the captain a warrant of seizure. At about the same time, notice of the forfeiture was emailed to MSC executives. "When a vessel introduces such a large amount of a deadly drug into Philadelphia's waters, my office and our partners will take the strongest possible action," Attorney McSwain said in a statement.

MSC rushed to move its very expensive cargo ship again. In exchange for a $10 million cash payment, a $40 million bond and a promise to cooperate with any ongoing investigation, Gayane was allowed to continue to her original destination, Rotterdam. On July 13, almost a month after being detained, the ship was released on bail.

$700 million fine for MSC

When Bozzo, the head of MSC, arrived in Washington on August 27, the risks of long-term damage to the company were mounting. Customs officials had suspended MSC's "trusted carrier" status under a 9/11 scheme that allowed carriers to avoid checks and lengthy delays at US ports in exchange for compliance. some security protocols. Meanwhile, prosecutors in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania have filed criminal charges against eight crew members, including Mr. Kavaja and first and second officers. All eventually pleaded guilty and were sentenced to federal prison. Behind the scenes, US authorities identified a faction of the Balkan Cartel that had financed and organized the operation, learning that the gang had brought in partners from Colombia and northern Europe to share the risk.

In the following months, the government entered into discussions with the MSC to get it to accept new security measures, such as more frequent crew rotation and the obligation to submit to polygraph tests. In return, the US government has extinguished the possibility of a significant reduction in the fines imposed on MSC. Taking into account the seizures previously made aboard the Carlotta and Desiree, these now total more than $700 million, based on a statutory fine of $1,000 per ounce of cocaine.

Federal prosecutors then turned their attention to an investigation into civil forfeiture, a measure intended to recover proceeds used in the commission of a crime. Although the use of Gayane in a criminal offense is an established fact, MSC can raise an "innocent owner" defense. To do so, the company must demonstrate that it could not have foreseen the use of its vessel for cocaine trafficking or that it had taken reasonable measures to prevent such conduct.

Cocaine "not loaded at sea", according to the MSC

In the fall of 2020, it became clear that MSC was not ready to make a deal with the government. The company has notified CBP that it plans to contest the sanctions related to Gayane, Carlotta and Desiree. The company's lawyers have also presented to the customs officials the conclusions of an internal investigation carried out by the company. "MSC does not dispute the fact that the US authorities have found about 20 tons of cocaine in the port of Philadelphia," said Mr. Broom, a company spokesman. But the MSC investigation has led us to the conclusion that most of this cocaine was not and could not have been loaded at sea." MSC did not provide further details on where or how it believes the drugs were loaded.

If the company shows that some of the cocaine was loaded ashore, showing that its employees played a lesser role in the scheme, the government may find it harder to justify stiff sentences. It can also serve as evidence if the foreclosure case goes to trial. However, according to a US official involved in the investigation, MSC's claims contradict facts already established in court as part of the crew's guilty plea and sentencing proceedings. "This position is in direct contradiction with the factual findings of the court", said the official.

The government is also conducting a broader criminal investigation against members of the Balkan Cartel who are suspected of orchestrating Operation Gayane. On October 30, Goran Gogic, a former Montenegrin heavyweight boxer, was apprehended at Miami International Airport before boarding for Switzerland. In a report, prosecutors accuse him of organizing the logistics of smuggling cocaine aboard commercial container ships on behalf of the Balkan Cartel, including Carlotta, Desiree and Gayane. According to a person familiar with the investigation, Gogic is "probably two or three levels below the person who puts it all together." Gogic's lawyer says his client is innocent.

A "turning point" in the history of maritime transport

The Gayane case may be a turning point in the history of shipping. Mr. Janse, the head of the Dutch police, compares the situation to what banks faced twenty years ago, when regulations in force in some countries forced them to better monitor the criminal activities of their customers and adhere to strict compliance standards. It was a profound change in the way they worked, costing them billions of dollars. "I was involved in the fight against money laundering 30 years ago and all the banks were saying they couldn't look at their customers' money and say it came from criminal activity," explains Mr. Janse. "None of them say that today. This is what we have to do with all transport companies".

If there was ever a time when shipping companies should be spending more money to combat trafficking on board their ships, it's now. When demand for consumer goods recovered from the initial downturn of the pandemic, commodity prices rose and companies seized a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They made a record profit of $217 billion in 2021 and are on track to make $275 billion this year, according to Drewry Shipping Consultants Ltd. Mr. Aponte's personal wealth has doubled during the pandemic, reaching $19 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. MSC bought 128 second-hand containerships between 2020 and 2021, increasing its fleet to 645 vessels and overtaking Maersk as the leading shipping company.

Although MSC has long claimed to take safety seriously, it admits that Gayane was a "red flag". After the incident, the company said it would spend $100 million over five years to improve anti-smuggling security. It says it now uses guard patrols on ships sailing along South America's west coast, drug-sniffing dogs in high-risk ports and remotely monitored cameras on its ships. Earlier this year, Mr. Bozzo, Chief Operating Officer, helped organize an industry-sponsored conference with the United Nations and the World Customs Organization to discuss ways to better combat drug trafficking. The MSC has also made another important change, according to a person familiar with its internal decisions:

Meanwhile, Gayane continues to sail the oceans around the world. Recently, he stopped in Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Portugal, far from the sea routes of South America. /  OFF Investigation (partially translated into Albanian for Hashtag.al)


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