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- They have turned to opium: through which channels heroin will flow to Europe and Russia
They have turned to opium: through which channels heroin will flow to Europe and Russia
The Islamic Republic of Iran has held back heroin trafficking from Afghanistan for decades at the cost of thousands of lives of its security forces, but now, for a number of reasons, it may lose control of its borders. In this case, huge stocks of opiates will flood the world market, which will set the consumption situation back to the levels of the 1990s and 2000s. Izvestia, together with the former head of the Moldovan police department for combating drug trafficking, Vladimir Cheban, and the former head of the investigative unit of the Russian Interior Ministry for combating organized crime, Sergei Pelikh, found out which routes the heroin caravans would take to Europe and Russia.
The caravan to the west
For decades, Iran has served as the main "cordon sanitaire" on the heroin route from Afghanistan, which is a world leader in the production of opiates (Izvestia previously wrote about this in detail). But now the Azerbaijani border guards have begun to face an intensive transfer of drugs from Iran — they are trying to transport dozens of kilograms of drugs on themselves, in trucks, using drones. Armenia has similar problems. Where does the cargo go next?
The analysis of operational data obtained by Moldovan law enforcement officers in recent years makes it possible to restore the scheme of delivery of Afghan heroin to Europe. The goods travel through Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia and Ukraine. Moldova plays an exclusively transit role in this scheme — the country is used as a platform for reloading and changing vehicles, but drugs do not settle on its territory.
— There was no heroin left on our territory. Local members of the criminal community ensured the secrecy and security of the cargo during transportation," explains a former Moldovan policeman.
There was also a second route through Turkey and Bulgaria. However, Bulgarian border guards significantly increased control at the Kapitan Andreevo checkpoint after tons of drugs went through it. This forced criminal groups to look for alternative ways, the Izvestia interlocutor notes.
The Kurdish trail
The heroin market is fundamentally different from the hashish market, says Cheban. If hashish shipments are scattered, then heroin traffic has a clear ethnicity and a high degree of organization.
Ethnic Kurds were behind most of the detentions that took place through Cheban's office. An operational check showed that many of them were related to the illegal Kurdistan Workers' Party.
The position of the Turkish side was particularly difficult in the investigation of these cases. Ankara, according to Cheban, is extremely scrupulous about issues related to the activities of Kurdish organizations and is not interested in publicly discussing the participation of Turkish citizens in drug trafficking.
The organization of heroin supplies resembles the work of the special services. Drivers, both citizens of Moldova and Turkey, as a rule, take deliberate risks themselves for the sake of money, they are not recruited by deception.
"The discipline in the groups I dealt with was maintained according to the principle of Italian omerta, the law of silence," says Ceban, a former high—ranking Moldovan police officer. — The families of the couriers who were imprisoned received good pay, which excluded the possibility of cooperation with the investigation.
Another element influencing the drug trafficking situation in Eurasia is the weakening of border controls on the border of Ukraine with Moldova, Cheban believes.
The northern route is the Aziz Road
In the context of European traffic, Russia is not just a transit territory, but also a place where key figures of criminal networks move. According to Cheban, several Turks and Moldovans, having married Russian women, moved to live in Russia and continued to organize bus routes with drugs to Europe.
According to Sergei Pelikh, the former head of the investigative department of the Interior Ministry of Russia, the global picture of heroin trafficking from Afghanistan became clear after the investigation of the criminal case against Ibrahim Safarov, nicknamed Boyim.
The drug came from Afghanistan via three main routes — the northern, the Balkan (via Turkey and the Black Sea to Europe) and the Iranian. Russia was not a transit point, but the main sales market, Pelikh says.
— Basically, there was no transit through Russia to Europe. The only thing is that the Baltic countries were "fed" from our route," says the source.
There was also barter: in Velikiye Luki, heroin was exchanged for ecstasy pills, which were sent back to Central Asia.
The operation to detain Safarov, at that time the main supplier of heroin to Russia, was carried out in 2004.
— Safarov was then the most important and largest supplier of heroin to Russia. The whole country was addicted to opiates, vint, and heroin," Pelich says.
According to him, Safarov, a former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan, took advantage of the chaos of the civil war in his homeland.
Safarov established supplies through "drug trains" and the so-called Aziz road (named after one of the accomplices responsible for the traffic section) through Kyrgyzstan, which, according to Pelikh, is still in operation. The court sentenced Safarov to 19 years in prison.
The network that has not disappeared
Safarov's criminal community ceased to exist after his arrest, but his accomplice Boymurodov disappeared and took over the entire network, investigators found out. Pelikh noted that Safarov's partner, who remained at large, collaborated with some security forces — for services and non-interference, he handed over large "weights", while continuing to wholesale drugs.
Pelikh does not rule out that the emissaries of the drug mafia are already preparing to resume supplies. Izvestia previously reported that several foreign drug traffickers who were released from prison were not deported to their homeland and remained in Russia. One of these people is Atobek G. He served his sentence in Russia, but managed to legalize it. At the end of last year, he was detained during a joint Russian-Kyrgyz police operation for preparing to sell drugs.
Current police officers share experts' concerns about heroin expansion into Russia. Operational data indicate an increase in traffic and the involvement in criminal business of representatives of Central Asian immigrants who have legalized in the country as labor migrants. According to Pelikh, a large wholesale (from 100 g of the substance) of a high-concentration drug (in criminal circles, this concentration is called HQ) costs 1.5 thousand rubles per gram. The retail price ranges from 1800 to 2300 rubles per gram. If the price drops lower, it may create additional conditions for the drug addiction of young people.
According to Pelich, the drug situation may worsen now, which is in the hands of our country's foreign policy opponents.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
