The late Belgian-Italian mobster Silvio Aquino had a novel way to smuggle drugs into Europe: hiding cocaine in shipments of tropical fruit. One of the reporting leads Ján Kuciak was investigating when he was murdered this February concerned Aquino’s efforts to launder his profits in Slovakia.
When he was murdered by an unknown assassin earlier this year, Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak was part of an international team looking into foreign drug smugglers suspected of laundering money in his country.From the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP):
The investigation reveals an international ring of drug traffickers with ties to the Italian mafia. Based in Belgium, with operations in the Netherlands, it could count on suppliers from Costa Rica and Colombia and secret large caches of cocaine in fruit shipments from Latin America to Western Europe.
Going Bananas: Flanders Transformed into Hub for International Cocaine Trafficking
When he was murdered by an unknown assassin earlier this year, Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak was part of an international team looking into foreign drug smugglers suspected of laundering money in his country.
In the wake of his death, the team has continued reporting, uncovering more about the criminal group and how it operated.
The investigation reveals an international ring of drug traffickers with ties to the Italian mafia. Based in Belgium, with operations in the Netherlands, it could count on suppliers from Costa Rica and Colombia and secret large caches of cocaine in fruit shipments from Latin America to Western Europe.
A major Belgian law enforcement operation named Raak (the Dutch word for “strike”) took down part of the network — only to see its mastermind murdered before he could be brought to justice.
Its remaining parts, spread across the world, have continued to function despite the Belgian police action. And even in Belgium, cocaine traffickers were quick to resume their work.
Belgium’s Top Narcos
Before his sudden murder, Silvio Aquino was a main suspect in what has been called “one of the biggest drug trials in Belgian history.”
The Raak investigation into cocaine smuggling — which involved 34 defendants and the seizure of over €8 million (US$ 9 million) in cash, drugs, cars, and weapons — dragged on for over four years before finally wrapping up on Feb. 1, 2017.
Large portions of the cocaine were imported by the Aquino family through the port of Rotterdam; helping explain why the Netherlands has become known in recent years as a European gateway for South American cocaine.
But who was Silvio Aquino, the family’s rising leader at the time of his death?
Born and raised by his Italian father in Maasmechelen, a quaint city of about 38,000 in Belgium’s Flanders region, Aquino grew into a key figure in the global drug trade at a young age (his last known job before going totally into drug trafficking was managing a pizzeria).
By the time of the most recent investigation, he had already faced multiple convictions: Once for international drug trafficking in Belgium in 1998; again in the Netherlands in 2004 for kidnapping a man who had sold him sugar instead of cocaine; and once again in Belgium in 2014, this time for criminal organization and exporting 6.5 tons of ecstasy pills to Australia.
Bald, clean-shaved, and muscular, Silvio Aquino looked as hard as his work.
He was also a hard worker. Evidence presented in court painted a picture of a man dedicated to enriching his family, which he worshiped like a proper mafia don. “I’m from the street. I kidnapped people; I’ve done it all my life,” he was overheard telling associates. “I don’t want problems. I want good business. I want to make money for the family.”......MUCH MORE
