Subj: Drug smugglers' European union 



Source: The Guardian, UK



Pubdate: 12 Dec 1998





Drug smugglers' European union 

By Duncan Campbell, Nikolai Chavdarov and Antoaneta Nesheva



Gungor Tekin was one of Turkey's most renowned international footballers, a

hero to the fans of not one but two of the country's biggest clubs. This

week he is starting a 23-year sentence in a British jail after being

convicted of a heroin smuggling operation that has cast light on the new

international links of the heroin trade. 



What has emerged from the case and other recent operations is that there is

now a European criminal community that is cooperating far more successfully

than their ministerial counterparts. While eastern European countries are

still negotiating over entry into the EU, criminal gangs across Europe have

joined forces to exploit what is still a growing market.



The Turkish, Bulgarian and Kosovan Albanian mafias have linked with Czech

couriers to supply British-based Turkish and English dealers with heroin.

Customs officers are frustrated that the organisers are still sitting

safely in Turkey.



Gungor Tekin played his football with the Turkish clubs Galatasaray and

Fenerbahce and later in Canada - but before the enormous explosion in wages

and signing-on fees. On retirement he aspired to a lifestyle he could not

afford. Initially he tried to set up a business exporting black London cabs

to Turkey. He also dabbled unsuccessfully in the property market. Then

contacts in the Turkish criminal underworld in north London suggested that

heroin was a simple way to recoup his losses. Five years ago, he set up a

base in a flat off the Edgware Road in central London.



But his contacts soon brought him to the attention of Customs and Excise

investigators who put him under surveillance. He had hired a young Turk,

Mustafa Mus, as his driver and translator and linked up with a third man,

Yucel Konakli, who lived in the Turkish heartlands in Haringey, north London.



Tekin flew backwards and forwards to Turkey and Northern Cyprus where he

dealt with one of the six main crime organisations running the heroin trade

there. He set up a 70 kilogram smuggling operation which would have netted

his team UKP6 million.



For this he needed a driver to bring the heroin through Europe. Turks

arriving with suspicious loads have recently fallen foul of Customs

intelligence operations so a Czech, Jan Jisl, was hired. He was told to

come with his wife and child to give the impression he was on a family

shopping holiday.



When he arrived at Ramsgate in a Czech-registered minibus, he was

immediately under surveillance.



He met his Turkish contacts in their car at the Travel Lodge on the M2,

little knowing that they were being followed all the way. They were

arrested in London when it was becoming obvious that they were being tailed.



On Monday at Kingston crown court Tekin was jailed for 23 years, Konakli

for 18, Jisl for 16 and Mus for 11. The case has provided a window into the

new order of the heroin trade in Europe.



Jisl came from Liberic, near Prague. Another driver from the same town was

also arrested last year and jailed for 25 years. The town and that area of

the Czech republic have become a centre for exiled Kosovan Albanians who

provide the link in the heroin chain from Turkey.



Chris Harrison, the senior investigating officer with Customs who led the

operation, said yesterday: "The Turks are ingenious people. They will use

any method open to them."



Kosovan Albanians had now emerged as major players in the link between the

Turks and the eastern European couriers. This has prompted claims,

supported by some eastern European agencies, that the Kosovan resistance is

now being financed by the heroin trade.



Mr Harrison says that a percentage of the heroin profits may certainly go

to the Kosovan resistance but he believes that Kosovan drug traffickers

would be involved in the trade regardless of the conflict.



Kosovan Albanians have rented houses in villages outside Prague where their

deliveries from Turkey arrive via the Balkan route. Couriers then take it

to Germany and onwards to Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands.



While the Kosovan Albanians have emerged as the new major players, the

Czech republic has established itself as the crossroads for east and west

traffic.



Earlier this year, Jiri Komorous, the Czech national drug squad chief, said

that his country had now become "the centre of the heroin and cannabis

trade in central Europe".



In another international link-up, Turkish traffickers have used Bulgarian

organised crime gangs to guard their shipments en route. One of the routes

is now through Bulgaria and on to Macedonia, Albania and Italy.



The other new development has been the growing use of containers to smuggle

heroin following a significant number of seizures of lorries with Turkish

origins. Bulgarian police sources indicate that another new route is via

container from the port of Varna to ports in the UK and Spain.



"There is no Mr Big, just a lot of people with good connections," said Mr

Harrison. "And they never step outside an area they don't control."