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Journalist Klaus Davi, an expert on organized crime, has specialized in the mafia. And says: The Swiss judiciary has a problem getting the highly professional criminals under control.
Michael Sahlireporter news
From Monday, a suspected boss of the Colombian drug cartel Clan del Golfo will be on trial in Basel. The Spanish-Colombian dual citizen Alvaro H.* (47) is said to have led the Basel branch of the notorious cartel – and according to the indictment brought cocaine worth millions into Switzerland.
The process is a rarity. In the past, our judiciary had a hard time dealing with cases of organized crime, explains journalist Klaus Davi (56). The Swiss has been dealing with international criminal groups for years and has specialized in the mafia. “Switzerland is not up to par when it comes to fighting international crime,” says Davi to Blick.
This was shown, for example, in 2014. At that time, pictures from a boccia club in Eastern Switzerland that had previously been bugged by the police were made public. 15 men sat at the table, spoke openly about drug trafficking. The investigators were certain: it was a Swiss cell of the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia. Seven years and a dozen arrests later, the case finally ended with acquittals in an Italian court – and a defeat for the investigators.
“The police corps are not diverse enough”
Another investigative flop happened in Zurich: after months of surveillance, hundreds of police officers stormed the then clubhouse of the Hells Angels motorcycle group in 2004. Here, too, the accusation was that a criminal organization had been formed. Only: There was practically nothing to prove it, even after the huge surveillance campaign.
The laws in Switzerland are less effective than abroad, explains mafia expert Davi. “In Italy, where I live and work, for example, just being a member of the mafia is enough to make yourself a criminal offence. That’s not the case in Switzerland – and that’s a mistake.”
According to Davi, the Swiss police have blind spots when hunting criminals. “The police corps are not diverse enough.” Specifically: “How should the police proceed against an organized criminal group from Nigeria if nobody in the corps speaks their language or understands the culture?”
Mafiosi stay under the radar
The general population has a wrong image of what organized crime means: “Many people still have a mafia image from the 1940s in their heads, where criminals shoot at everything immediately. Today they wear ties, take care of things like money laundering – and therefore stay under the radar.”
Blick accompanies Zöllner: “Have a variety of ways to discover drugs”(03:23)
In addition, organized crime runs across borders. This means that criminal hunters must also be internationally active. In reality, this often does not work smoothly. Davi on Blick: “Cartels are better networked globally than the judiciary. It’s not enough to simply send out a request for legal assistance and hope for a miracle.” And in his experience, Swiss cooperation with the Netherlands in particular, where tons of drugs land in their ports, is not going very well.
Gang use code words for the drugs
The indictment of the alleged Basel cartel boss Alvaro H shows how efficiently the criminals work together across borders. He is said to have brought cocaine from South America to Basel via a complicated system of middlemen, by ship and plane.
The gang used code words: instead of drugs, they spoke of lemons or coffee. Whether Alvaro H. can outwit the Swiss judiciary must be seen from Monday. Defense attorney Moritz Gall told Blick that his client denied all the central allegations in the indictment.
* Name changed