Cocaine from South America at the Port of Salerno: 18 precautionary measures

They brought the drugs from South America to the Port of Salerno on container ships, also with the complicity of port agents and companies that allowed the transport.

The organization had a complex structure with specific roles and duties: a leader who was responsible for maintaining relationships with suppliers and issuing instructions from above to his associates, a person who was responsible for operational management through coordination with various associates, and fixers dedicated to finding contacts within the port or in any case able to plan the procedures to allow the drugs to leave the customs area.

The logistics base was located in Atena Lucana, where the promoter of the criminal group, Peter Paladin and his partner Gerarda Soccodato, coordinated drug trafficking from inside a bar and a residence linked to them.

The supply of marijuana was instead the responsibility of a person with no criminal record, Petrosino Vincenzo, resident in Sala Consilina who, on a regular basis, was in charge of supplying the organization with narcotics, with deliveries of 1 kg at a time. During the investigations, the existence of another criminal association emerged, connected, made up of young pushers residing mostly in the municipality of Sala Consilina.

Eighteen people were placed under precautionary measures during the operation carried out by the Salerno Provincial Finance Police, who this morning executed an order for the application of precautionary measures issued by the preliminary investigations judge of the Salerno court at the request of the District Anti-Mafia Directorate. During the investigation, it was established that the organization was involved in the recovery and importation of drugs on several occasions. Evidence was gathered for these incidents against 18 individuals, some of whom reside abroad.

In particular, the group was responsible for the recovery of a cargo of 32 kilograms of cocaine, hidden inside a refrigerated container from Colombia and destined for the port of Vado Ligure (Savona). Due to organizational mix-ups, the container containing the narcotics was reloaded to another destination. The gang, it has been reconstructed, staged an attempted importation of 1,5 kilos of cocaine from South America to be recovered on Spanish soil. The transporter identified for the Madrid - Salerno trip However, he did not respect the agreement reached with the criminal group the day before departure.

Again, the organization took care of the recovery of a cargo of 157 kilos of cocaine, coming from South American drug traffickers, passed through the port of Salerno and destined for a Torre Annunziata criminal groupThe narcotics hidden aboard the ship, not recovered by the criminal group, later arrived in the Canadian port of Halifax and were seized by local authorities. Two negotiations were also initiated for the importation, again from South America, of 200 and XNUMX kilos of cocaine, respectively.

The organization operated in the provinces of Naples and Salerno thanks to a well-established system of supply of psychotropic substances which saw the suspects engaged in continuous and intense negotiations with various foreign suppliers interested in the transfer of cocaine from South American Countries.

To evade routine checks carried out at the Salerno port, the gang found compliant shipping and destination companies with whom they prepared suitable supporting documentation so as to transport the illicit goods hidden in a cover load inside a container that, once it arrived at the port of Salerno, was recalled by the destination company.

The system "ripp off" Instead, it allowed the narcotics to be recovered furtively through unauthorized entry into the port and the removal of bags hidden inside containers. Although there have been some cases in which negotiations for the importation and purchase of narcotics did not materialize, the Gico of the economic and financial police unit of Salerno managed to seize the goods in the port of the same capital, In March 2019, over 18 kilos of cocaine arrived by sea from South America and hidden inside the engine compartment fan of a refrigerated container.

During the investigation, the sale of 2 kilos of narcotics to a person of Salento origins was also reconstructed, for a fee of €69. In relation to some of the identified transactions, the presence of foreign nationals in Italy was also discovered, specifically invited by the narcotics-supplying syndicates to complete the supply operations.

Those who ended up in prison were Pietro Paladino, Gerarda Soccodato, Marco Gonzales, Vincenzo Petrosino, Vincenzo Boccuti, Fabio Pietro Vespoli, Desirée Pompeo, Cleto Rosciano; under house arrest: Govanni Calandriello, Vincenzo Caputo, Michele Chirichella, Rosario Coppola known as taccarella, Giuseppe Lammardo known as Peppe Berlusconi, Attilio Laurino, Domenico Lo Iacono, Davide Quercia, Carla Severino, Sabatina Santino, Carolina Spolzino. Six other people are required to report to the judicial police.