by Our Correspondent In London
In June, Sri Lanka saw the largest consignment of contraband cocaine that was ever seized in history. The raid was carried out on a tip-off received by the Finance Ministry’s Special Unit in the presence of President Maithripala Sirisena and Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake
His trial is set to start on October 11. Meanwhile in Nairobi the trial of Jack Marrian the 31-year-old Managing Director of Mshale Commodities, (a subsidiary of London-based ED & F Man, where he has been employed for the last seven years) is set to start on October 3. He faces charges of smuggling 220lbs of cocaine.
Neither man knows each other, nor have their companies ever done business, but their predicaments are linked by dockside corruption in Brazil.
The Sunday Leader has unearthed startling indications that both Marrian and Vasudevan are the fall guys for a trade that exploits significant weaknesses in how shipments are secured before and during their journey. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime report states that 90% of all trade is conducted via maritime containers of which more than 500 million are shipped yearly and of this amount, less than 2% are inspected. It is believed that drug gangs have started targeting sugar because, until now, it has been deemed a ‘low risk’ import and rarely searched. Contents also do not show up on scanning equipment, therefore have to be searched by hand – a monumental task when a single container carries approximately five hundred sacks of sugar. Brazil, the largest of the sugar producers, exports approximately 27.7m metric tons annually.
Once sugar importers have purchased an overseas consignment, they have no control over which ship is used or what route it takes. Shippers simply book the goods onto the next most convenient departure.
To counter theft and deter smuggling, international companies follow set security measures to protect consignments from tampering. Each commodity load is counted into a container, then locked with a seal and placed inside a bonded warehouse until the ship is ready to be loaded.
However, the system is not 100% foolproof or infallible and dockside corruption allows ‘senders’ to hide narcotics along with duplicate container seals. The ‘receivers’ break open the container at some point en route, remove the stash and re-lock the doors with the new seals. This is known as the ‘rip off’ or ‘gancho ciego’ [blind hook] tactic. None of the merchandise is stolen, ensuring that importers at the far end remain none the wiser if the shipment has been tampered with in transit.
Meanwhile, here in Sri Lanka, events unfolding over June 13 and 14 were almost identical to those that happened a month later in Mombasa.
According to local media reports Vasudevan, an importer for 25 years with no history of any offences, had ‘willingly complied’ when asked to attend ‘a routine check’ on June 13, and he was ‘already waiting for them at the yard’. Having failed to find anything in the scanning of the first containers, the Narcotics Raid Unit (NRU) told Vasudevan to return the following day. The report continued that ‘officers were somewhat puzzled by the importer’s behavior. He conducted himself in a manner that did not arouse any suspicion and was at the yard even before the investigators arrived.’ This time, the search was successful and the cocaine, marked with a tiger stamp was found in three black travel bags. The haul was a Sri Lankan record despite the fact that Sri Lanka is not considered to have a big enough customer base to justify the arrival of such a huge quantity of cocaine. Although the country has been used as a transit point for heroin produced by its neighbours to the north, (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Myanmar) the 2015 Sri Lankan Handbook of Drug Abuse Information does not even mention cocaine use within the country.
A description of the journey taken by Amro’s 54 containers may shed some light upon why Mr. Vasudevan behaved like a man with no idea what was about to happen to him.
On 4th May, 184 sugar containers belonging to export company Sucden were loaded onto MSC Julie in Santos, Brazil. It is not unusual for sugar companies to purchase stock while ‘afloat’ and Amro Sugars only signed a sales contract (through local Sri Lankan agency, Ramcom) once the ship was fifteen days out to sea. Amro bought 54 of the containers, while other Sri Lankan importers, RG Brothers bought 90, and Woodland and Benson both bought 20 containers each.
The Sri Lankan Narcotics Raid Unit (NRU) received foreign intelligence that was so precise even specific container numbers were provided and thus, President Maithripala Sirisena – with attendant press – was invited along to witness the showcase seizure. The drugs were uncovered inside one of 54 containers Amro had received in Colombo. The presence of the President has made some parts of the Sri Lankan press reluctant to suggest the wrong man may be being held. Meanwhile, police sources said they suspected the cocaine was destined for ‘Ndanghreta crime gangs based in Italy.
The consignment went via Sines, Portugal where the containers were transshipped onto MSC Lucianafor the Sri Lankan leg. Once berthed in Colombo, Ramcom delivered each company the relevant documents and only at that point did Amro know which containers they were to receive. The cargo cleared customs on June 9 and sat unopened for four whole days in a privately owned yard until the NRU inspection. It was only chance that Amro received the cocaine container; it could have just as easily been assigned to Woodland, RG Brothers or Benson.
In a further twist, a second container bought by Amro Sugars was found with enough cocaine to smash the record set only a week earlier. This separately purchased consignment left Santos, Brazil (again) aboard MSC Letizia. This is the same ship as in the Mshale case, it loaded on the same date meaning both cocaine stashes were travelling aboard.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency had been observing the MSC Letizia carrying since its departure from the port of Santos, Brazil on June 10, but its focus was on the containers bought by Mshale. The DEA believed that drug traffickers had ‘piggy-backed’ onto some of the containers abroad the vessel and deemed it likely that the drugs were to be extracted during one of the boat’s scheduled stops in the Mediterranean. The Amros sugar containers were transshipped onto MSC Maria Saveria in Sines Portugal, while the Mshale containers were transshipped in Valencia where police were waiting. In the event, the smugglers were unable to extract the drugs at either place, possibly due to police presence. Commenting on the Mshale case, DEA spokesman Melvin Patterson said, ‘a criminal gang tried to get the cocaine out of the container, but failed’.
It is well known to drug enforcement agencies that the Italian crime syndicate ‘Ndanghreta controls most of the cocaine traffic between South America and Europe and is known to operate in ports all along the Iberian Peninsula as well as Italy. Correctiv, an online German investigative news site, says, ‘The dominance of ‘Ndanghreta in the international coke market springs from their ability to pay everyone and settle any debts of anything lost during seizure. To maintain their role in Europe, [they] have to be able to pay at the best price: €110-120 per kilo. To secure this price they must always import large quantities. The loads in transit are huge and continuous.’
When the Spanish police searched the Mshale containers in Valencia, they were unable to find the cocaine because four of the containers – one of which hid the cocaine – had already been placed aboard the MSC Sonia that had already set sail. So the Kenyan customs authorities were tipped off and duly found the haul. Valued at £4.5m it is the largest ever uncovered in that country. In an interview, Jack Marrian, said that upon hearing about the bust while he was at home in Nairobi, “I knew it was serious. But I was not unduly worried because the company retained a government-supervised inspector to check all shipments.” Despite them being informed that the cocaine was never intended for Kenya and had nothing to do with Mshale, its managing director or the clearing agent, they arrested them both. While having experienced problems with heroin smuggling (dhows coming out of the Marakan Coast now that the traditional routes across Syria and northern Iraq from Afghanistan are disrupted, Kenya is not known to have a large enough market of cocaine users to justify such a large amount for domestic use.
The second find in Colombo was clearly missed not only by the smugglers in Sines, but also by the DEA, because there was no tip off this time. After clearing customs in Colombo, these containers were taken to the company’s warehouse where Amro workmen uncovered 665lbs of cocaine along with duplicate seals – as used in the smuggling ‘rip off’ method.
Amro management immediately alerted the police and the cocaine was impounded. No one was arrested and the company was ruled an unwitting recipient. However, no review of Vasudevan’s position was triggered in the light of the reaction to this second discovery.
He has been held in Magazine Remand Prison for the last three months and Amro Sugars’ bank accounts have been frozen, leaving the company barely able to operate.
Sri Lankan newspapers have refused to write about the anomalies in his case. “It’s a terrible mess”, said Vasudevan’s nephew – Sivarajah Jegathieswaran. “We need help. If he was importing cocaine why would he let it all sit in the yard for four days before the police arrive? But no one will listen to us.” It does seem strange.
If Vasudevan is indeed a drug baron, why on earth would he send such vast quantities of it to his own business address? Did the infamous cocaine king Pablo Escobar put notes on his exports saying ‘Love from Pablo’, with the address of his latest hideout?
The discovery of a container seal along with the cocaine in the Kenyan bust is likely to form an important part of Marrian’s defence. It indicates that the shipment was the subject of a failed ‘rip off’ since Mshale would have had no need to secretly reseal its container at the end of the journey.
The defence will also point out that no unusual movements of company funds have been detected, there are no signs of the company having any underworld relationships and furthermore there is no notable cocaine market. It is thought that Vasudevan’s lawyers will take the same course.
Meanwhile, although on opposite sides of the Indian Ocean, two respected sugar traders and a clearing agent’s lives hang in the balance due to the growing popularity of the ‘rip off’ smuggling methodology that sometimes goes wrong.
The men’s lives have been turned upside down and if found guilty, they face life imprisonment.
While police forces involved have undertaken to investigate very diligently, they have also been slow to accept that sometimes contraband has arrived at a destination the smugglers never intended. However those smugglers are never going to put the call in to say a mistake has been made and ask for it back.
History Of Blind Hook Technique
Until a few years ago, the favoured method for cocaine trafficking was the establishment of fake cargo companies. ‘Ndanghreta’ has since switched tactics however and now plants members all along its coke smuggling routes. According to Nicola Gratteri and Antonio Nicaso, authors of the 2015 book on the crime group Oro Bianco (White Gold), this new technique was originally developed in the Calabrian city of Gioia Tauro. Here, in one of Europe’s largest ports, ‘Ndanghreta has been able to fully exploit the fact that more than 3.6m containers pass through annually, making full supervision of shipments next to impossible. Gioia Tauro’s location in the middle of ‘Ndanghreta’s home turf – and the extra power they wield there – has enabled them to take more risks while they hone the ‘blind hook’ method.The strategy is that at the point of departure, a gang member covertly opens up a container bound for the chosen port and hides drugs inside along with a duplicate container seal. His counterpart at the destination is given the container’s number, breaks open the seal and rushes to offload the contraband and lock it up with the new seal before customs or police are able to check.
‘Ndanghreta prefers this method as it is cheaper than creating false companies.and uses comparatively smaller loads – 440lbs is usually the maximum. This means any individual ‘loss’ (through customs or police seizure) can be discounted as ‘wastage’ rather causing any major setbacks.
The Italian Guardia di Finanza first worked out that containers were being broken in to using the ‘blind hook’ method when they realised that certain container numbers did not match their seal numbers on arrival. ‘Ndanghreta responded to this law enforcement breakthrough by forging locks with the matching numbers. And so the game of cat and mouse continues.