If your ill-gotten gains are parked on Malta you might want to move them, these folks are turning-over every rock.
From the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, October 10:
A few hours by ferry across the Mediterranean Sea from Sicily lies a harbor where modern buccaneers thrive.
Here on the island nation of Malta, the ancient walled cities of Vittoriosa, Senglea and Cospicua loom over ships that sail into the Grand Harbor of Valletta. The farther up the harbor one penetrates, however, the less welcoming the scenery....MUCH MORE
Roads and waterways narrow as the postcard shoreline gives way to run-down warehouses and rusty huts that hint at the network of smugglers that have built a stronghold on the docks. They have been linked to trafficking in illegal drugs and migrants; smuggling cigarettes; illegal fishing; and spiriting fuel stolen from Libya’s poorly protected stockpiles to avid customers.
Malta has become a “crossroad of illegal trafficking,” said Col. Giuseppe Campobasso, who heads anti-drug law enforcement for Italy’s financial police in Palermo. His unit is part of the Libeccio International operation of the Guardia di Finanza, collaborating with Spanish, French, Greek and Italian authorities in tackling illegal trafficking at sea.
Malta’s central Mediterranean location makes it prime smuggler territory, but it has other charms for them as well. Shell companies proliferate there. Vessels change names and ownership with ease, swapping national flags from Togo to Tanzania to Belize.
Investigators say the smugglers innovate constantly, scouting new routes and implementing new techniques, from masquerading as fishermen to interspersing legitimate cargo with illegal wares. The trade crosses many borders around the Mediterranean, from the ports of Spain all the way east to the island of Cyprus.
The accused smugglers have one thing in common: connections on Malta.
It was this murky underworld that captured the attention of murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The car bomb that killed her last Oct. 16 was triggered from a boat in the Grand Harbor, investigators say.
Reporters for the Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI), which is part of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), in cooperation with Forbidden Stories and The Daphne Project, have documented a dozen major smuggling busts in the last decade that were run by Maltese citizens, transacted just off the island’s shores or supported by Maltese shipyards that service the vessels used in maritime crime.
One particular wharf in at the far end of Grand Harbor, called the Il-Moll Tal-Pont, runs like a thread through this tapestry. Italian police say that wharf was where a 42-meter ship called the Quest was overhauled last spring.
On the Mediterranean Sea off Cape Bon, Tunisia
Its fresh blue-and-white paint job was evident last June 2 as the Quest rode the waves off northeastern Tunisia. The Maltese vessel had sailed from the Gulf of Oran off Morocco and claimed it was going to Alexandria, Egypt. The men aboard were supposed to be fishing, but nobody was busy with nets or lines, and the vessel forged straight ahead rather than looping in circles as fishermen do.
Someone was watching.
The Monte Sperone is a patrol ship of the Italian financial police, trained for large anti-drug operations at sea. For 40 hours, its officers had been surveilling the Quest, at one point contacting the captain to inquire about his business. He said the ship was merely a recreational yacht. As he motored toward western Sicily, authorities made their move.
Col. Cristino Alemanno dispatched two teams of heavily armed agents from the 58-meter patrol vessel. They sped across the water in a pair of fast rubber dinghies, quickly boarding their target and racing toward the captain, forcing a speedy surrender. As the agents inspected the ship, they found 10 tonnes of hashish.
Revolution Sparks a Shift in Smuggling
Until 2011, Moroccan hashish was mainly smuggled to Europe via small boats that landed on Spanish shores. After the Libyan revolution, smugglers began using Tobruk, a coastal city in western Libya, where the hashish is stockpiled and protected by local militias.
International police say the hashish is then split up into smaller loads and distributed around the world. The Italian mafia are likely bringing it into Europe, police say, possibly through Italy or the Balkans.
Recent years have brought a further logistical change. While the drugs were once transported in large, mostly Syrian-owned cargo vessels, they now mainly move aboard fishing vessels owned by Maltese or Italians, according to Libeccio International officers.
“The hashish is increasingly routed through Malta and Maltese entities,” says Campobasso, “while recent cases suggest there are stakes of the Italian mafias and Maltese organized crime.”
The Quest, with its close ties to Malta, seems to confirm that assertion.
Alemanno, who oversaw the Quest’s capture, says its route drew police attention. “It is a fishing support vessel that had left Malta and sailed to a specific spot off Morocco, a spot we flag as high risk because it’s where, usually, the hashish is [transferred] at sea from small boats onto larger ones.”
Investigators later discovered the ship’s name had been changed a few days earlier from Sea View to “M/Y Quest,” a fairly common name among yachts.
“It was clearly done to confuse possible investigators,” Alemanno says.
A Maltese, an Irishman … and a Ukrainian?
Previously:
The Daphne Project · Pilatus: A Private Bank for Azerbaijan’s Ruling Elite
