Palic, the juvenile delinquent from Zagreb who became the ‘pimp’ who flooded Europe with cocaine

“He was about 40 or forty years old, and he started out as a juvenile delinquent Zagreb, Like many others. Then he started to have more and more contacts, and eventually he was able to control all stages of drug trafficking, from the sellers to the drug dealers. brazil YesPut distributors in Europe. All investing groups call on him to organize their operations.” This is how he defines Tomislav Stamuk, head of the Croatian police’s anti-drug unit, To Kristijan Palic, whom he considers one of the greats Broker Of the medicine.

After four years of research, the research findings are now emerging. Adriatic Operation, It has other names in different countries, such as follow the money in Brazil or Cartel-3 In Turkiye. Summary of this operation led by UCO of the Civil Guard, Which includes police officers from Brazil, Turkey. Dubai, Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Serbia and Italy, Tremendous: 40 arrests in various countries, 65 million euros blocked, more than 8 tons of cocaine seized in various storage facilities… However, beyond the figures, the main thing is to completely destroy the major drug introducers in the EU.

And it all started in 2020, thanks to Palik. He Lieutenant Colonel of Uco Oscar Esteban Its gist is as follows: “A yacht was stopped near Canary Islands with about a ton of coke. It came from African Route And he was headed to the EU. Then we found out who he was. Broker The one who arranged everything, a person who had the ability to organize the whole operation for others in return for a commission, and therefore had a very important purpose. He had contact with investor groups, who were members of the Superclan from the Balkans; in Brazil, to buy medicines; in Sierra Leone And Ivory Coast, storing it in Italy, with ‘Ndrangheta (Calabrian Mafia) to introduce it to Europe…”.

Among others, his clients were Superclan According to Stamuk, the Balkans are actually made up of four bands. These clans of Montenegrin or Croatian origin employed the services of Palic and were primarily responsible for flooding Europe with drugs. In fact, The head of Europol’s anti-drugs unit, Robert Fay, This Thursday it was explained that these are the total ” responsible for 50% of the cocaine sold in Europe”, Which makes this crackdown on gangs one of the biggest successes against organized crime. In fact, “half of all criminal gangs in Europe have drug sales as their main business,” says Fay, which shows just how important drug trafficking is to them.

Palic established operations in other countries with the same investors, not only in Spain, as in the case of the Canary Islands, but also in other countries Netherlands or tropical Aruba Island, Among other places. His contacts were in the jungles of Brazil PCC (1st Capital Command, A powerful organized crime group born in Brazilian prisons in the 90s helped him buy in bulk, and that’s not all: during these four years of investigation he was kidnapped in Brazil, and was The PCC that paid his ransom And saved him, Esteban remembers.

But the bosses of this whole criminal network sometimes have seven lives, like one of them, still wanted and caught and miraculously alive after getting Five tablets in Kyiv (And not in war, but in gangster affairs, as they would say pulp Fiction). However, violence is omnipresent in their lives, attracting murders, vendettas, robberies and numerous crimes across Europe.

As countries got involved and Europol set up an international task force to coordinate, the whole structure suffered massive setbacks until it eventually collapsed. One of the keys to this was the seizure of servers containing critical information in 2021. Second, the hacking of the system Sky ECC, An encrypted and ultra-secure communications system widely used by criminals.

In Brazil, the money laundering infrastructure was hit, regardless of whether the suppliers were there or not. “One man inside Curitiba spent too much money, and he turned out to be one of the leaders of the organization in Brazil, who we detained on a plane full of drugs,” reports Marino Gomes from the Brazilian Federal Police. “Thanks to the information we had, we identified two shipments of 800 and 700 kilograms of cocaine, and in one of the 33 searches we discovered more than that 3 million euros sandwiched together In a house. They had fake companies created by an accounting expert,” he added.

In Spain, Central Court Order of Instruction No. 6 investigates in conjunction with Specialized Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office. He General Alfonso López, Chief of the Judicial Police The Civil Guard has described the operation as “unprecedented”, in which coordination between police authorities around the world has helped to eliminate the main drug suppliers in Europe. Lopez also highlighted the collaboration of Dubai, where the leader of the gang in charge of the first storage of cocaine in Sierra Leone was hiding, and Turkey, where the man was captured. Broker.

Returning to this, his luck ran out last November, when Turkish police arrested him in Istanbul, where he lived luxuriously and discreetly. He Police Chief Erdem Koc, who commands the Turkish police’s anti-drug unit, They further added that “he is still in custody, awaiting extradition to Croatia”, where it seems likely that a long sentence also awaits him, as Europol considers him a “target of high police interest”.

in his day, his own Türkiye’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya published a video in which Palic is being protected by the police of the anti-drug trafficking brigade, which can be seen at the end of this news. In it, Palic walks arrogantly but resignedly thinking about anything, such as perhaps the world is becoming too small for organized crime, but also for those who fight against it.