Cocaine Confidential

by Clarkson, Wensley

  PART SEVEN

  THE FUTURE – COCA NEGRA AKA BLACK COCAINE

  Many law enforcement officials fear that a new derivative of cocaine called Black Cocaine could eventually become more widespread than the drug that’s been harvested for thousands of years in the foothills of the Andes. Black Cocaine, where the regular cocaine base is mixed with various other substances to produce a black powder, is almost impossible to detect with traditional anti-trafficking methods.

  Legend has it that Black Cocaine was first invented by Eugenio Berríos, a biochemist from Chile who worked during General Pinochet’s dictatorship. It’s claimed that Pinochet ordered Berrios to produce Coca Negra as part of an illegal money-making scheme to give Pinochet such immense financial power that he would never be overthrown.

  Black Cocaine itself was first uncovered during a random search of a car stopped by police near Bogotá, Colombia, in 1998. Initial fears that this might be the start of an attempt by coke barons to flood the world with an alternative version of cocaine did not come to fruition until many years later, in May 2009.

  That’s when Colombian police seized their first big shipment of Black Cocaine, which consisted of 250lb in two containers, bound for Italy from Bogotá’s El Dorado airport. Documented as bubble-jet printer cartridges, the containers passed the police dogs unnoticed and the drugs were only uncovered because police were already suspicious of the Colombian export company handling the cartridges.

  Since then, Black Cocaine is believed to have gradually started to become more prevalent, although this is impossible to accurately assess since it is undetectable with no odour. This means that not even well-trained drug-sniffing dogs will find it. It also has to be forensically examined in a lab before the presence of cocaine can be confirmed.

  One old-time British cocaine trafficker based on the Costa del Sol told me recently that Black Cocaine ‘will eventually change the face of cocaine trafficking’. He explained: ‘The process that’s being used to produce it has never been openly revealed but I am told the key is that it doesn’t involve any of those substances like kerosene that are used to wring the juice out of the coca leaves when they get to the labs in the jungles. The trouble is that there is a lot of wastage in this process compared with “normal” coke which is why Black Cocaine’s availability has been so limited until recently.’

  My contact added: ‘But I hear that the Colombians are hard at work trying to nail down the best and most productive method to make Black Cocaine. But if you think about it, we won’t know if or when Black Cocaine takes off because no one will be able to detect it.’

  Experts say that Black Cocaine consists of a chemical combination of regular cocaine hydrochloride and other chemicals, such as potassium thiocyanate, usually added at 40 per cent per mixture. Cobalt and ferric chloride are then added to kill the odour of the narcotic. These chemicals are mixed with regular cocaine and can be easily separated later after a successful illegal transaction. The most important aspect of Black Cocaine is that it does not react when subjected to various official chemical tests used by law enforcement agencies across the world whenever they uncover a shipment of suspected cocaine.

  According to cocaine insiders, shipments of Black Cocaine have been disguised as everything from plastic coating to make-up to fertiliser. After arrival at its intended final destination, Black Cocaine is then transformed back to the familiar white powder by being passed through solvents such as acetone or ether. In other words, it is then effectively washed out with a solvent upon delivery rather than the other way round, which is the key to why this potentially lucrative new version of cocaine may eventually take over the world market.

  Recent reports claim a small amount of Black Cocaine was found during recent police raids in Germany, the Netherlands and Albania. It was stored in packages originating from the same exporters but authorities have not revealed any more details. However, this suggests that only one Colombian cartel is currently ‘experimenting’ with Black Cocaine but that is sure to change as this new type of product gains acceptability.

  One Chilean coke baron explained: ‘We’ve known about black coke for years but I hear that it is not as strong as the real thing. The big cartels are being slow to produce it because they don’t trust the actual end product. Like any business they have to keep their quality levels high otherwise they’ll start losing customers. But this is sure to change as preparation methods are adapted to the new type of cocaine.’

  CHAPTER 40

  In this book you’ve met murders, rapists, drug dealers, pimps, people smugglers and counterfeiters. I’ve encountered men with gunshot and knife wounds and those whose wives or girlfriends have been kidnapped and raped by rival cocaine gangs. This is the real world of Cocaine Confidential.

  I’ve been surprised by the level of access I’ve been able to gain to reveal the real story of cocaine for this book. Many of the older criminal faces I am regularly in contact with have been amazed that I managed to get any of the younger ‘cocaine cowboys’ to open up. As one old British villain said when describing how cocaine had changed the face of the underworld: ‘There was things you did and did not do. Now it’s just bang, bang you’re dead. End of story.’

  But maybe they cannot resist showing off because they want to be somebody. Erich Fromm, in his Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, called it: ‘The need to make a dent.’ The cocaine barons want to let the world know they exist even if they can never reveal who they really are. It may also have something to do with their consumption of cocaine and other drugs; many of these younger gangsters are far more reckless than a lot of their predecessors. Yet, at the same time, some of these coked-up hoods have also shown a surprising degree of humanity. They are not all simply cold-blooded desperadoes prepared to kill anyone to get what they want. Far from it; many are just lost souls, abandoned by their families at an early age and left to fend for themselves. It’s not really so surprising they opted for a life in the cocaine business. They had little choice.

  Crime has always thrived in the poorest areas, and it’s beyond doubt that cocaine is turning many of the most poverty-stricken parts of the world into criminal melting pots, sparking cold-blooded feuds and killings involving gangsters from the streets of London to the slums of West Africa.

  But these days the spider’s web is widening fast. As the global financial crisis continues to bite, it is expected that many of the cocaine gangs will push deeper and deeper into the areas that most law-abiding citizens presume to be safe for themselves and their families. That means there could well be more danger to innocent people as the cocaine gangs fight over lucrative territories inhabited by middle-class cocaine consumers.

  Yet one must never overlook the fact that these cocaine gangsters are contributing much to the world’s economy. In truth, they have been virtually encouraged by some Third World governments who for so many years have chosen to overlook the ‘black economy’ on their doorsteps. There is absolutely no doubt that this casual attitude has helped prop up the economies of many countries, both rich and poor. But the world is now entering a new, even more dangerous phase. The economic meltdown means there simply isn’t enough money or work to go around. The cocaine criminals out there on the streets are themselves struggling to make ends meet and that could have an ominous knock-on effect.

  I will no doubt be accused of glorifying criminals and their cocaine wars, but there is no denying that such lawlessness plays a huge role in many people’s lives. No doubt some, from the safety of their ivory towers miles away from the cocaine badlands, will accuse me of exaggerating the depth of the problem but I can assure you this book reveals merely the tip of the iceberg.

  In Spain and other cocaine-reliant nations like it, many believe society will revert to the Third World country it was considered to be until thirty years ago. Inland, the rural communities will fend for themselves while the once rich and flashy coastal regions will crumble into disrepair. Living standards will drop and the jobs that are sustai
ned by tourism will collapse, leaving huge numbers out of work.

  Whatever happens, there is no doubt that the world is paying a terrible price for having turned a blind eye to cocaine for so long …

  But the final word goes to one of those involved in the thick of it as the world’s consumption of cocaine continues to rise.

  Cocaine is the fuel that powers the people. It will never be taken off the streets.

  — Rio dealer Carlos.

  EPILOGUE

  SAN CRISTÓBAL, VENEZUELA, SEPTEMBER 2012

  There was little or nothing about the conservatively dressed middle-aged man who had just parked his car that was likely to pique the interest of residents of the sprawling Andean mountain city of San Cristóbal, near Venezuela’s border with Colombia.

  So it would have come as a surprise to any local who happened to be hanging around as day turned to evening to see him surrounded by dozens of armed police as he tried to make a call at a bank of public payphones facing a church. They’d just witnessed the end of the twenty-year career of the world’s second most important and wanted drug trafficker after Mexico’s Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, head of the feared Sinaloa cartel. Known widely as El Loco – ‘the crazy one’ – for his incandescent temper and bloody way of dealing with rivals, Daniel Barrera had followed in the footsteps of many Colombian drug lords and moved to the notionally safer haven of Venezuela in the wake of his country’s relentless US-sponsored assaults on its coke trade.

  ‘He just shrugged and had the look of a resigned man who knew his time was up,’ said one local street vendor who witnessed the arrest. ‘The National Guard pulled up on motorbikes and he surrendered without a struggle. It was over in no time.’

  The arrest was the culmination of a lengthy clandestine operation conducted by Colombian, Venezualen, British and American agents that cut short the shady half-existence Barrera had led as he sought to run his international narco-empire from San Cristóbal at the same time as evading detection. He’d used many aliases and moved between nondescript apartments and guest-houses throughout the border city; more surprisingly, he’d resorted to plastic surgery, as well as the excruciatingly painful expedient of burning his hands with acid to erase his own fingerprints. In fact his cosmetic work went beyond mere camouflage. The billionaire drug lord had admitted to one female Colombian undercover officer who’d earlier infiltrated his entourage that he was obsessed with looking thin. So much so that the svelte man taken into custody bore little resemblance to the portly figure he cut in the only known picture of him that had previously existed.

  As Colombian and Venezuelan law enforcement agencies monitored Barrera’s movements with American and British assistance, they picked up ‘chatter’ in early 2012 indicating that Barrera had flown to West Africa to monitor his cartel’s operations there: the region was used as a staging post for cocaine shipments on their journey from Venezuela to the UK and Europe.

  Despite the spread of cold-blooded, merciless Mexican drug cartels taking over much of the Colombian coke barons’ trafficking operations in South America, Barrera’s capture was still hailed as a major breakthrough. It was a rare success in the battle against the Latino cocaine billionaires.

  Maybe Barrera’s arrest marked the beginning of the tide finally turning in the battle to break the coke barons’ stranglehold on the world’s entire cocaine market. But only time will tell.

  AFTERWORD

  Shortly after completing this book, I got a phone call from two British cocaine gangsters based in Spain called Jim and Tel, who helped me when I went on a research trip to their ‘manor’, just south of Benidorm. Their speciality had been smuggling cocaine on small yachts across the Mediterranean.

  The last straw for them came when a vessel they were sailing off the island of Menorca sank in a storm and one of their crew was drowned. The Latin American cocaine barons who’d hired them to smuggle the drugs accused Jim and Tel of stealing their cocaine and commissioned two South American hitmen based in Madrid to kill them.

  ‘We’re in deep trouble and none of it is our fault,’ said Jim nervously. ‘I think we’re both going to move to somewhere like Thailand and hope that eventually the cocaine bosses will call off the hitmen and leave us in peace. But in this game anything can happen.’

  Jim had these words of advice for anyone planning to try and get a slice of the cocaine business.

  ‘Don’t bother. There’s nothing there for anyone. The good times have gone and everyone is desperate. We’ve got a death sentence hanging over us, even though we watched one of our best mates drown in front of our very eyes. It’s not worth it.’

  TEN BIGGEST COCAINE BUSTS IN HISTORY

  • 30 September 1989: 47,178lb/21,399kg of coke found in a Los Angeles warehouse

  • 21 March 2007: 42,845lb/19,434kg of coke seized 20 miles south-west of the Panama coast aboard a motor vessel called Gatun

  • 10 March 1984: 30,423lb/13,799kg of cocaine discovered on a train in Tranquilanda, Colombia

  • 17 September 2004: 30,109lb/13,657kg of cocaine seized in the Eastern Pacific by US DEA on board fishing vessel Lina Maria, 300 miles south-west of the Galapagos Islands

  • 13 May 2005: 30,100lb/13,653kg of cocaine uncovered on a jungle riverbank near Tumaco by Colombian Navy

  • 25 May 2011: 26,500lb/12,020kg of coke found in warehouse in Cartagena by Colombian police officers

  • 5 January 2001: 26,397lb/11,973kg of coke found by US Coast Guard on the Svesda Maru, in the Pacific Ocean about 1,500 miles south of San Diego

  • 23 September 2004: 26,369lb/11,960kg of cocaine seized from the Belize-flagged vessel San Jose in the Pacific by USS Crommelin

  • 2 October 2002: 25,300lb/11,475kg of coke off coast of Panama discovered on board fishing vessel Paulo by US Coast Guard

  • 27 July 1995: 24,325lb/11,033kg of cocaine intercepted 780 miles west of Peru on a ship called Nataly One raided by US Coast Guard

  Crime leaves a trail like a water-beetle;

  Like a snail, it leaves its shine;

  Like a horse-mango it leaves its reek.

  — Old Spanish proverb

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  THE CURSE OF BRINK’S-MAT

  Twenty-Five Years of Murder and Mayhem

  Wensley Clarkson

  On 26 November 1983 six armed robbers escaped with £28 million worth of gold bullion from a Brink’s-Mat warehouse at London’s Heathrow Airport. The heist changed the face of British crime for ever. In the following years, many of those involved, innocent and guilty alike, have been sent to an early grave. Two decades on, the death toll is still rising.

  Nobody is better placed than Wensley Clarkson to track the vicious, violent and unexpected waves that followed in its wake, or bring to life its cast of larger-than-life characters. From smalltime crime in south-east London, to ‘the heist of the century’ and its bloody consequences, Wensley Clarkson’s The Curse of Brink’s-Mat is an epic tale of villainy, gold and revenge.

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  HASH

  The Chilling Inside Story of the Secret Underworld Behind the World’s Most Lucrative Drug

  Wensley Clarkson

  For millions of people across the world, lighting up a joint is no more controversial than having a cup of tea. But in Hash Wensley Clarkson explores the dark and sinister side of this multi-billion pound business: one fuelled by a brutal underworld network of dealers, hitmen, drug barons, drug mules, bent cops and even terrorists.

  Sex, intimidation, bribery and murder are all employed in a quest for staggering profits. Travelling from the lawless Rif mountains in Morocco, to darkened warehouses in Spain protected by heavily armed gangsters, and exploring the real story on both sides of the law, this is a revelatory roller-coaster ride through the secret world of Hash.

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  COMING SOON

  LEGAL HIGH CONFIDENTIAL

  Wensley Clarkson

  Legal Highs
are without doubt the biggest drug scourge to blight the world since recreational drugs first hit the streets more than 100 years ago. Their growing menace opens up a new front in the drug war, shifting the battle line from the Colombian jungles, Moroccan valleys, Afghan hills and the Winnebagos of New Mexico to especially constructed laboratories on the outskirts of Shanghai and other cities across the globe.

  But who are the shadowy characters behind the extravagant new drugs such as ‘bath salts’ and ‘Miaow Miaow’? The scientists, the rogue boffins, the factory sweat-shop workers, the smugglers, the suppliers, and, ultimately, the dealers who sell tens of millions of packets of these substances every week? This book will go inside the lives of all these people to reveal for the first time the true stories behind the emergence of the most deadly narcotics the world has ever seen.

  PUBLISHED MARCH 2015

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

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