Cocaine Confidential

by Clarkson, Wensley

  Unlike most of the other dealers I’ve interviewed for this book, Tommy says he ‘hasn’t got a clue’ when or if he will ever quit selling cocaine. ‘Like everyone in this game I dream about that day all the time but, you see, I’ve lasted so much longer than most people that I am tempted to just keep going until the day I die.

  ‘I like the freedom of my career. The fact I can kick back at home, watch the footie and the business comes to me without any real effort. There aren’t many people who can say that about their job, are there?’

  Tommy seems to have worked out a simple way of operating that fits his needs like a glove. But there are also the part-timer dealers, the ones who lead a double life in pursuit of extra cash and a constant hit of cocaine …

  CHAPTER 33

  ROBERT

  In London, at least a third of all cocaine dealers are holding down ‘civilian’ jobs while dabbling in selling coke to small, select bands of friends and work associates.

  Take Robert. He’s a middle-of-the-road advertising executive in his mid-thirties, married with two children, and lives in a comfortable semi-detached house in the suburbs of south-west London.

  ‘I keep myself well under the radar,’ says Robert. ‘If my wife found out I was flogging coke on the side, she’d probably divorce me.’

  So why does he do it then?

  ‘I’ve always liked a snort of coke since I was a teenager. But when I started working in advertising, I found that there were quite a few like-minded people in the business. Trouble was, a lot of these people were typical middle-class types in that they didn’t like getting their hands dirty actually dealing directly with what they perceived as horrible, evil drug dealers.

  ‘So muggsy me found myself increasingly being asked to go and pick up packets of grams for different people at work. It got on my nerves that I was the only one who didn’t seem to mind mixing with drug dealers. I was annoyed because if you’re gonna take drugs then you need to deal with the people who supply the stuff.

  ‘A lot of the cokeheads at work simply took it for granted that I’d always be the one to pick up their drugs for them, so I started to take a little “fee” out of each packet for myself. I reckoned it was the least I deserved for taking the risks that come with buying coke. I soon stopped having to buy any coke for myself and simply created a sachet of my own by taking some out of each of the other packets.

  ‘But in the end, so many people were asking me to be their delivery boy that I reckoned I’d be better off simply charging more for each gram I picked up. I called it a handling charge but it’s just the same as being a dealer, I guess.’

  Eventually, Robert built up such a large database of ‘cocaine friends’ that he seriously thought about quitting his day job.

  ‘But then I stopped myself and thought it was much better to keep going in my proper career but top up my earnings through selling coke. That was some time before I met my wife and decided to start a family. It’s funny because I’d grown sick of waking up in a strange bed with a strange face next to me. But I was also too greedy to stop being a dealer just because I was thinking about settling down.’

  At his own wedding, Robert claims he sold 30 grams of coke to various guests without his wife noticing. ‘I took a conscious decision not to tell her what I was up to. I guess I wanted to start afresh and I was afraid she might not want to marry me if she knew I was dealing coke on the side.’

  It was around this time that Robert got called into a meeting with one of his bosses. ‘He started out by telling me he knew what I was up to. I swallowed hard and expected to be fired there and then but then this guy simply said I should have told him before because he needed me to buy him some coke as well!

  ‘I was suspicious to start with because I thought maybe he was trying to lure me into a trap but when he came back the following week and ordered twenty grams I realised he was the biggest office cokehead of all.’

  These days Robert reckons his part-time coke dealing has actually helped his career. ‘You see, it’s given me an insight into my bosses, as well as my work contemporaries. I know something about them that they don’t want anyone else to know. Geddit?

  ‘I actually reckon I’m virtually unsackable at the moment because my boss must be shittin’ himself that I’d blow the whistle on his coke habit. I am so glad I wasn’t tempted to go fulltime, though. I’ve got the best of both worlds here and I’ve even managed to control my own coke habit.’

  He explained: ‘Seeing your workmates off their heads is enough to put anyone off. A lot of these people I supply coke to are taking five, six grams a week. That’s an expensive habit. It’s not a party thing when you snort that amount. I even tried to dissuade one mate from doing any coke because he clearly couldn’t handle it and had a very addictive personality. But he got very angry and demanded that I keep selling him coke, so I shrugged my shoulders and took the money.’

  Back at home in south-west London, Robert continues to hide his secret life as a coke dealer from his wife. ‘I know it’s not healthy but I just dare not say anything. I love my life as it is. Sometimes I get a gram and have a cracking night out with my workmates but it’s not something I want to do all the time.

  ‘The strange thing about coke is that many of the people who do it would never dream of breaking the law in any other way. It’s almost as if they have separated the reality from what they’re doing but then again I help them in that process because I am acting as a buffer between their safe middle-class lives and the drug dealer they never want to actually meet.’

  Robert says he is extremely careful not to deal coke to anyone outside of his work and social circles. ‘I keep it small and many of my customers are rolling in money, so they buy large quantities of coke each time. I reckon I probably earn more money out of coke than a lot of fulltime dealers, who sell a gram here and a gram there.

  ‘One idiot at work almost landed me in it trying to impress some girl he knew by telling her I could get the best coke in London. I went crazy with him when she called me up out of the blue and asked on the phone if I could sell her some coke. I told this bloke never to do that again. I only deal with people I have actually met.

  ‘The funny thing was that when I was speaking to this guy my voice went very hard and nasty and I realised I was almost starting to behave like a real drug dealer. Oh well.’

  Robert says the money he earns from selling coke has enabled him and his family to enjoy some ‘very special holidays’. He added: ‘I got myself a BMW estate the other day. It’s not as predictable as it sounds. Most of the middle-class dads round where I live own a BMW or an Audi so I should fit in. The funny thing is that my wife has never once asked me how we can afford all this stuff. She just presumes it comes out of my legitimate salary.’

  Robert has worked at the same advertising agency now for ten years and he reckons that during that time he’s ‘probably doubled’ his earnings through coke dealing. ‘I like the combination of having a serious job and then picking up some extra cash on the side. I guess there’ll come a day when I’ll just hang up my mobile and make out the suppliers have all been murdered or disappeared and then continue my life as if the dealer stuff never actually happened. That’s the masterplan anyway. Who knows if I’ll get away with it?’

  PART FIVE

  THE NEW FRONTIERS

  For centuries Africa has attracted the greedy, the ruthless, the kleptocratic and the cruel. They’ve come to plunder and loot, taking away everything from slaves to ivory, tin and diamonds. But now its west coast has fallen prey to a new strain of imperialism: it’s become a transit point and storeroom for much of the world’s cocaine.

  It’s reckoned that at least £1 billion worth of cocaine is transported every year through West Africa, according to the latest United Nations estimates. The value of this illicit trade dwarfs entire economies and is corrupting some of the region’s more fragile states, many of whom are only just pulling out of decades of bitter civil wars.

&nbs
p; Countries on the West African coast offer traffickers everything they need: proximity to Europe, a weakened state and administrative structure, a desperate citizenry and a hopelessly overworked, underpaid and corruptible police force. At least a third of Europe’s annual consumption of cocaine now transits via West Africa. As criminal networks swamp the region, many have renamed West Africa’s Gold Coast as the Coke Coast.

  Ironically, just as Ronald Reagan’s ‘war on drugs’ changed the way the cartels operated back in the eighties, crackdowns by Spanish and European Union authorities during the past ten years have forced them to seek out new ‘landing points’ for their cocaine after it is shipped across the Atlantic. As a result, the power and influence of mainly Colombian and Mexican cartels can be felt all the way to the top of some West African governments.

  Local gangsters – mainly financed by the South American cartels – have set up elaborate front companies, which ‘buy’ high-level protection for the business interests of their new South American partners. Most aren’t difficult to spot. In Accra, Ghana’s capital, BMWs, Mercedes and newly imported canary yellow Humvees stand out from the beaten and battered local taxis and horse-drawn carts. It’s a similar story in many of the region’s other nations, notably Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone.

  Until a decade ago, West Africa just didn’t appear on the British law enforcement’s radar when it came to monitoring cocaine trafficking. Now they’ve a host of suspects, many of whom are Latin American.

  ‘There are increasing signs of a permanent South American presence in the region of significant players,’ said one British official. ‘They often have residences in more than one West African country and they go where they’re needed.’

  Yet there is another side to this; Latin American cocaine money has undoubtedly also helped build schools and has even created employment for tens of thousands of people in these often destitute nations.

  Take the former Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau, one of the world’s poorest countries. It has the dubious distinction of being dubbed Africa’s first ‘Narco-state’.

  At the heart of all this cocaine trafficking are G-B’s chain of islands, the Bijagos Archipelago, which are a smuggler’s haven. Their countless coves and inlets are ideal for loading contraband onto small boats for onward passage to Europe. The islands also contain illegal airstrips, where aircraft arrive packed with cocaine from South America.

  As a result, G-B’s political and economic systems have been systematically infiltrated by the cocaine cartels, even sparking a sinister battle over control of the nation itself. Latin American drug barons were recently accused of using their power and influence to kill the president of G-B, Malam Bacai Sanha, who died in mysterious circumstances in Paris in 2012, almost sparking a civil war in the process.

  As a result of the president’s sudden death, a race is now allegedly on for control of G-B. The choice is stark: the Latin American cartels or a new, free form of democracy, which could eventually mark the end of the South Americans’ shortlived influence in this volatile area of the world. However, if the cartels retain their power and influence there is a genuine fear that their evil influence will spread like a spider’s web across the entire continent.

  Sadly, the signs are ominous that the Latin Americans will indeed outlast any hope of true democracy in G-B. One recent statement by a cocaine trafficker turned DEA informant claimed that new president Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo – head of the country’s latest transitional government – had offered to help smooth the arrival of those same drugs and arms. This was denied in the strongest terms by a spokesman for Nhamadjo, who insisted categorically that the president had had no contact with the traffickers.

  On the streets of G-B, relatives of drug runners and police killed on the orders of the Colombian cartels claim their loved ones were gunned down in cold blood after crossing the cocaine traffickers. Former Colombian cartel member Juan Martinez says that the Colombians will not quit the tiny country because they have more financial resources than the entire G-B economy. He supported claims that South Americans have spread their influence through building schools and providing work to the population, who’d otherwise be destitute. In G-B itself the local media never mentions the Colombian presence openly for fear of upsetting their paymasters. There are even rumours the South Americans now own one of the biggest media outlets in the country.

  However, Guinea-Bissau is not the only country in West Africa where Latin American cocaine traffickers have taken up residence.

  Take Senegal’s Atlantic coastline, another favoured location for the cartels: in the summer of 2012, 1.2 tons of pure cocaine was found in a fishing boat near the town of M’Bour. Only three days later, a further 1.25 tons was seized from a cellar beneath a nearby villa. The drugs had a combined street value in Europe of about $225 million (£140 million) – or one quarter of Senegal’s entire national budget. Three Colombians and a Frenchwoman were arrested. None of those arrested has ever been charged or tried. Senegal’s Gendarmerie in Dakar have asserted that they remain behind bars ‘waiting for a trial’. But many suspected that the suspects had long since bought their freedom and disappeared.

  Closely linked with all this cocaine smuggling is arms smuggling. Small arms proliferation has been recognised as one of the leading factors contributing to political instability in West Africa. Many veterans of the region’s various wars of independence are still in possession of their AK-47 assault rifles. As a result, the territory has often served as a weapons stockpile for the whole of Africa, including the rebels in Senegal’s Casamance region. It’s symptomatic of West Africa’s acute vulnerability, a vulnerability that’s compounded by endemic corruption. Smugglers can bribe their way out of jail, but also ‘buy’ the services of policemen, army officers and even politicians. Under such circumstances, effective law enforcement is virtually impossible.

  Leopold Senghor airport in the Senegalese capital Dakar is one of the most popular departure points in West Africa for couriers taking cocaine to Europe. Yet seizures are rare. The going rate at the airport for bribing airport security to ignore half a kilo of cocaine – with a European street value of £15,000 – is about £3,000. Dakar’s nearby seaport has never chalked up a single major cocaine seizure, despite being one of the largest ports in the region.

  The South American cartels also have serious plans to eventually transform West Africa from being a cocaine staging post into an operating base.

  Raw coca – grown until very recently solely in South America – obviously has to be refined into pure cocaine. In the past this process usually occurred in South America. But recent seizures of crack cocaine in West Africa suggest that chemical processing is already starting to take place there.

  Even more significantly, the cartels also have plans to cultivate their own raw coca plant in West Africa by setting up new coca plantations. The area’s climate had always been considered unsuitable for coca cultivation until the emergence of a new strain of coca plant originally developed to be grown in the moist jungle regions close to the Amazon – and which we’ve already seen growing in Panama. Many in Latin America believe that the new type of coca plant would thrive in West Africa.

  Such ‘home produced’ cocaine would be a first for Africa. It is a potential goldmine for the cartels because it would cut out the most expensive part of their manufacturing process, which is the transportation of cocaine across the Atlantic Ocean.

  One ex-trafficker told me the South Americans have already begun experimental ‘grows’ in isolated areas of West Africa as ‘pilot projects’.

  So, with at least three so-called ‘narco-states’ in the region now said to be virtually under the control of the South American cartels, I talked to some of the gangsters involved in turning this area into such an important hub for cocaine.

  CHAPTER 34

  MARCO

  Cocaine trafficker Marco – now based in Spain – told me he ‘ran’ six airliners across the Atlantic from South and
Central America to West Africa during an eighteen-month period between 2009 and early 2011.

  Before then, only light aircraft – often twin-engined Cessna 441s – would take off from transit points (usually in Venezuela) laden with cocaine produced in the rainforests of neighbouring Colombia and Peru. To extend their range, the planes were packed with plastic containers filled with aviation fuel.

  These small aircraft then flew across the Atlantic, often with one crew member furiously pumping extra fuel into the engines. Having landed on a bush airstrip on the West African coast, the plane’s valuable cargo would be unloaded for onward trafficking to Europe.

  But, says Marco, the cartels wanted bigger, better ways to transport their coke and they believed using larger planes would be far more financially viable. He explained: ‘In any case, more than half those light aircraft flights ended in disaster with pilots either crashing or ditching their planes because they were either loaded with too much or too little fuel.’

  Marco went on: ‘So the cartels started buying up secondhand airliners. It made complete sense. The main attraction to the cartels is that there is no radar coverage over the ocean, meaning big aircraft can cross the Atlantic virtually undetected. The sky’s the limit.’

  So ‘Air Cocaine’ was born. It was a remarkable development – even by the cartels’ standards – because of the distances involved and the complexity of flying big jets. A trip from Venezuela to West Africa is about 3,400 miles.

  ‘But they’re ludicrously cheap to buy second hand and actually create less suspicion than smaller craft,’ says Marco. ‘The pilots are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars just for one flight. They make more in a week than most pilots make in a year.’