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.
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.
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 ;-)
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.
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".
I have never seen coke cut up with those substances. Mannitol is mainly used in Europe. To test cocaine on how pure it is many people test it by checking how much solves in water.
That's why people take prescription opiates - it says right on the tin how much it is. With the street stuff you have to estimate the purity, even the compound, there's dozens of opiates, and sometimes people get it wrong.
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.
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.
Most likely Montenegro -> Serbia. Much easier, then going through two other countries, and Montenegro has issues (both election, and previous corruption problems).
Last time I passed through Montenegro I got stoped by two cops and they straight out asked me money (they wanted 20 euros for each), so they didn't suspend my license. (and yes, they were slavic/montenegrins and not Albanians)
I was going 64 khm/h on a 60km/h zone. They are corrupt as hell.
> Most likely Albania - Kosovo - Serbia route, since it's already established heroin smuggling route.
I assume this would require the smuggler to either be a Serbian or Kosovo citizen, or make a handover to a local person in Kosovo? A citizen of a third country cannot enter Serbia after entering Kosovo from a third country. The Serbian authorities will deny you entry and tell you to go back and enter into Serbia from one of the other countries bordering it.
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.
In 2006, Montenegro seceded from the union, following an independence referendum which narrowly passed, leading to the full independence of Serbia and Montenegro.
I suppose, if in the position to decision, whatever actions might improve the odds of success are on the table. You’d bribe the port, but only if you were highly confident the bribe was going to work and the port wouldn’t turn on you as soon as the mooring lines were secured.
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.
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.
I would expect that proceeds from drugs constitute the vast majority of value that is laundered today, though. It would be interesting to consider the impact, for sure.
> We also have the recent opioids crisis. It didn't work out very well.
The opioid crisis has been terrible, but it didn't happen as a result of drug laws becoming more lax. If anything, existing laws made the crisis much worse because people who became addicted to prescription opioids had no way to get a fix, so they were forced to purchase illegally off the street. If an American doctor knowingly gave an addict a prescription opioid for relief, they could be arrested as a "dealer".
The countries that have had the most success in fighting hard drug use, such as Portugal, did exactly the opposite of the punitive approach people in the U.S. consistently advocate for. Instead, they decriminalized drugs and put the resources from police enforcement and imprisonment into rehabilitation instead. Instead of arresting doctors, safe injection sites allowed for individuals to safely manage their habit while they work toward improving their lives.
If the U.S. spent even a fraction of its war on drugs budget on rehabilitation we would have far fewer addicts, not more. I don't think the "if it's legal, there will be more addicts" argument holds any water.
>> If the U.S. spent even a fraction of its war on drugs budget on rehabilitation we would have far fewer addicts, not more.
Rehabilitation and legalisation are distinctiv issues. When someone talks me about legalisation I think of cannabis-like legalisation where corporations make a profit not rehabilitation clinics like in Portugal.
If the gov wants to put the drug dealers out of business they could offer free shots for users as a free/affordable medical service. Along with campaigns and hard work the usage may even drop.
>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.
Singapore thrives by being a semi-democratic state. A benevolent strong man prevents rival parties from gaining a foothold by carefully tending to the needs of each of the major ethnic groups (Malays, Chinese, and South Indians). It’s not a true democracy, but it has to be the nicest non-democracy in the world.
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.
I believe cocaine is more addictive than sugar. Cardiac arrest is another issue.
Not much is known about long term health effects of cocaine because we don't have a majority of population snorting cocaine and eating and drinking it every single day.
Would you rather abandon the rule of law entirely rather than admit prohibition was a massive mistake and/or not done in good faith? (Not directed at you specifically because I assume your comment was fecetious, just posing the question to clarify thoughts on the matter.)
From view point of a criminal, prosecution of crime is root of all evil.
> Not directed at you specifically because I assume your comment was fecetious
It's kind of argumentation used in discussions, where absurd claim is made first, and then both parties are walking together from absurd to clarity, step by step. Doesn't work on HN, because HN'ers are jumping around, instead of walking, and throwing random downvotes.
If I’m a “criminal” who sells weed, and my sister is raped and killed, I don’t think prosecution is the “root of all evil”. I’m not sure your point makes sense unless breaking one law makes you oppose all laws somehow.
I mean it’s illegal in many places to blaspheme against the local religion, let’s not pretend that all laws are just and all criminals are depraved immoral beings.
Fun fact of the day: lobbying is legal and common across all of Europe. It's why the EU has such intense agriculture protectionism, the farmers act as an interest group that constantly lobbies on their own behalf. It's why Germany's domestic auto market has been specifically set up for decades to protect the domestic players against foreign competition. Go into Western Europe and try threatening Airbus, good luck, they'll lobby you right out of the EU unless you have a superpower backing you.
Lobbying does not mean corruption is legalized in the US.
In my observation, people that claim lobbying is legalized corruption in the US, don't know anything about the laws that surround lobbying, the limits, how it works, and how it doesn't work. It's primarily a popular Reddit-knowledge (aka low quality, easy to throw around, often wrong or incomplete) bumper sticker to post online. People routinely go to jail for violating the strict laws surrounding lobbying. You can't buy politicans and you can't buy legislation; trying that is a quick trip to prison.
Lobbying in the US is more lax than in most of Western Europe, that much is true. Althought the special interests in Europe are every bit as potent as those in the US. As a politician, just try going after farm subsidies in the EU, see what happens to you.
As is usually the case when it comes to fake Reddit-knowledge, the reality of lobbying in the US is far more nuanced and complicated. I understand people love their bumper stickers though, for artificial virtue signaling purposes ("Free Tibet").
You can hire a registered lobbyist and they can argue a position that you favor. That's most of what you can do. And nearly everything to do with lobbying in the US is public information due to hefty disclosure requirements.
Well, lobbying is not an instance of retail corruption, where everyone is on sale for some price. However, it (lobbying) is a form of network corruption--where individual acts don't appear corrupt. At a macro level, they appear corrupt. Anyway, network corruption can't be prosecuted.
Now that bribery is explicitly legal in the US, and lobbyists deliver the bribes, lobbying has become more or less synonymous with bribery, because who would pay any attention to a lobbyist without a bribe in hand?
I'm afraid I must have misunderstood you. To describe my comment as pedantic perhaps inverted your intended meaning, or at least I got the wrong end of the stick. No offence intended anyway.
I said your comment was pedantic, and your response was basically confirming that you were indeed being pedantic.
pedantic: overly concerned with minute details or formalisms.
Obviously the original poster didn't _literally_ mean enter any noun at all, because that wouldn't work. Perhaps their choice of wording could have been better but the argument was pretty clear in the context of the discussion.
I think any reasonable person who was interested in participating in the actual discussion would understand their point, unless they were trying to be... _pedantic_ about it.
Enter your comment, where you cherry-pick 3 nouns - out of thousands of possible activities that could have worked just fine - so as to be able to proclaim "a-ha! you are incorrect, sir".. which ultimately brought nothing constructive to the conversation.
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.
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].
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.
> 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.
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.
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".
--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
”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?
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.
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.
> 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?
> 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".
Mixing something 1:1000 is a lot harder than 1:10, especially when you’re just dealing with solid particles of ??? sizing.
Anything in Bosnia or Croatia, and then through the Serbian parts of Bosnia up to Serbia itself.
Last time I passed through Montenegro I got stoped by two cops and they straight out asked me money (they wanted 20 euros for each), so they didn't suspend my license. (and yes, they were slavic/montenegrins and not Albanians)
I was going 64 khm/h on a 60km/h zone. They are corrupt as hell.
I assume this would require the smuggler to either be a Serbian or Kosovo citizen, or make a handover to a local person in Kosovo? A citizen of a third country cannot enter Serbia after entering Kosovo from a third country. The Serbian authorities will deny you entry and tell you to go back and enter into Serbia from one of the other countries bordering it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbia_and_Montenegro
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.
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.
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).
The opioid crisis has been terrible, but it didn't happen as a result of drug laws becoming more lax. If anything, existing laws made the crisis much worse because people who became addicted to prescription opioids had no way to get a fix, so they were forced to purchase illegally off the street. If an American doctor knowingly gave an addict a prescription opioid for relief, they could be arrested as a "dealer".
The countries that have had the most success in fighting hard drug use, such as Portugal, did exactly the opposite of the punitive approach people in the U.S. consistently advocate for. Instead, they decriminalized drugs and put the resources from police enforcement and imprisonment into rehabilitation instead. Instead of arresting doctors, safe injection sites allowed for individuals to safely manage their habit while they work toward improving their lives.
If the U.S. spent even a fraction of its war on drugs budget on rehabilitation we would have far fewer addicts, not more. I don't think the "if it's legal, there will be more addicts" argument holds any water.
Rehabilitation and legalisation are distinctiv issues. When someone talks me about legalisation I think of cannabis-like legalisation where corporations make a profit not rehabilitation clinics like in Portugal.
If the gov wants to put the drug dealers out of business they could offer free shots for users as a free/affordable medical service. Along with campaigns and hard work the usage may even drop.
I don't think heroin will ever be legal as weed is legal in some states.
Decriminalised at the end user level ? maybe. Fully legalised and sold at walmart ? eh, I doubt it
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.
Sugar related health issues such as diabetes and obesity have far higher costs to society than cocaine abuse does.
> Not directed at you specifically because I assume your comment was fecetious
It's kind of argumentation used in discussions, where absurd claim is made first, and then both parties are walking together from absurd to clarity, step by step. Doesn't work on HN, because HN'ers are jumping around, instead of walking, and throwing random downvotes.
I mean it’s illegal in many places to blaspheme against the local religion, let’s not pretend that all laws are just and all criminals are depraved immoral beings.
Lobbying does not mean corruption is legalized in the US.
In my observation, people that claim lobbying is legalized corruption in the US, don't know anything about the laws that surround lobbying, the limits, how it works, and how it doesn't work. It's primarily a popular Reddit-knowledge (aka low quality, easy to throw around, often wrong or incomplete) bumper sticker to post online. People routinely go to jail for violating the strict laws surrounding lobbying. You can't buy politicans and you can't buy legislation; trying that is a quick trip to prison.
Lobbying in the US is more lax than in most of Western Europe, that much is true. Althought the special interests in Europe are every bit as potent as those in the US. As a politician, just try going after farm subsidies in the EU, see what happens to you.
As is usually the case when it comes to fake Reddit-knowledge, the reality of lobbying in the US is far more nuanced and complicated. I understand people love their bumper stickers though, for artificial virtue signaling purposes ("Free Tibet").
You can hire a registered lobbyist and they can argue a position that you favor. That's most of what you can do. And nearly everything to do with lobbying in the US is public information due to hefty disclosure requirements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States
Criminalization of enter a noun enables corruption on a massive scale.
Criminalization of crime enables corruption on a massive scale.
:-/
Thanks!
you're welcome!
I said your comment was pedantic, and your response was basically confirming that you were indeed being pedantic.
pedantic: overly concerned with minute details or formalisms.
Obviously the original poster didn't _literally_ mean enter any noun at all, because that wouldn't work. Perhaps their choice of wording could have been better but the argument was pretty clear in the context of the discussion.
I think any reasonable person who was interested in participating in the actual discussion would understand their point, unless they were trying to be... _pedantic_ about it.
Enter your comment, where you cherry-pick 3 nouns - out of thousands of possible activities that could have worked just fine - so as to be able to proclaim "a-ha! you are incorrect, sir".. which ultimately brought nothing constructive to the conversation.
I hope that clarification helps!
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.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/10/blow-up-how-...
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.
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.
-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?
We already have all the data points - recreational (liquor and marijuana licenses) seems to work well and then you have the pharmaceutical companies
Did anyone else notice this publication date?
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
Coincidentally, one of the criminal elements in the show are the "Vampires".
--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
Can anyone explain how/why Togolese flag give immunity?
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.
https://youtu.be/otwucZMciUM
> 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.