So got a question since I'm not involved in this.

Say you are a top guy over in Europe. How do you build a business relationship with say a top guy in Colombia? Do you get a phone number from someone and call them?

Do you make contact through the dark web instead since its safer and less risky? I mean how the fuck do you request 50 tons of Cocaine and get that shipped to where you are located?

How is it done? Business in the drug trade has to be way more discreet than just picking up the phone and placing an order and giving a shipping address. I highly doubt some of these guys ever speak on the phone due to that being too risky. I also imagine some of these guys never ever meet in person no matter how many years they are associated.

When you watch movies like Scarface where Sosa and Tony are talking on the phone, I highly doubt that form of communication ever takes place, especially in 2024. They were talking on a landline which to me is just make believe and quite frankly if anyone ever did that they are not very high IQ.

As far as making first contact, from what I know the Ndrangheta and later the Albanians(and others) sent brokers to South American countries, but it's impossible to know the details. Maybe they just start hanging out in popular spots, spending a little money and asking around.

I'm just guessing but I think if you were to go to a place like Medellin in the 90s or early 00s and asked around it wouldn't be take long before you met someone important.

But in most cases I think they first make contact in places like Marbella or Amsterdam, places where dealers and mafia guys from all over the world hang. You go to a popular place or a yacht club or whatever, and see some well dressed South Americans/Russians/Italians driving luxury cars, it's not hard to tell what they do for a living.

Same thing with Dubai, in more recent times, but I'm not sure how many South Americans go there.

So basically it works the same way as finding a dealer in a major city when you are looking for a hook up at a nightclub for example, and then you build your relationship from within. Instead of getting high on your own supply you agree to become strictly a distributor where you are from (City) and then build your business from there. First they may just agree to a certain amount and then as you become more trustworthy they allow you to distribute more and more. You keep doing this until you finally get rounded up by the FEDS in about 10-15 years or end up dead at some point. If you do end up surviving to "tell the tale" you can go into the Witness Protection program if you make a plea deal.

Maybe we should ask Darko Saric?

Now the business is on a complete different level but this is how they started.

The Colombian cocaine trade in Europe
In the mid-eighties, the cartels expanded their sales market to Europe. Two big bosses: Luis Ochoa and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela lived in Spain at the time, because they had emigrated from Colombia after a minister had been murdered and the hunt for the entire narco-mafia had opened. As always, the drug traffickers follow the routes to Europe that are historically and culturally obvious. Moreover, air traffic between Madrid and South America is intensive. Just as Surinamese and Antilleans smuggle cocaine to the Netherlands, the South Americans sought their bridgehead in Europe in Spain. In 1985, both gentlemen were arrested by the Spanish authorities and sent back to Colombia, where they were soon released. The short history of the cartels is already full of mythology. In revenge on the Spanish government, they are said to have decided to poison Europe with their merchandise. A more materialistic explanation that comes down to the desire to enlarge the market at a time when the American market was saturated, sounds more plausible. A small colony of compatriots formed in Spain. Our Dutch Bettien M. came into contact with young Colombian men in Marbella who had the explicit goal of building themselves up as drug dealers in Europe. Their first and foremost task was to find the right contacts in Spain. We have the impression that, after having consolidated to some extent, they did not move on to Northern Europe in the first place, but to Italy. This country, with its mafia, has the reputation of having contacts and Colombians and Italians seem to get along well in their dealings. We encounter exactly the same relationship between dealers of these two nationalities in the Netherlands from the end of the eighties.

The transport of cocaine from Colombia to Europe presented a new problem. The small planes used by Colombian pilots to reach the mainland of the United States with one stopover did not reach Europe. There was an attempt to drop large quantities of well-packaged and waterproofed drugs from old passenger planes off the coast of the East of England near oil rigs, from where they would be taken to the mainland by helicopter, but that attempt was short-lived. Initially, it was less risky to hide drugs in small quantities in letters and postal packages and send them to an address in Europe. This method is still used, also for the Netherlands, but the disadvantage is that the police are now more alert and that the quantities that come through are small. Furthermore, kilos were taken by camels or mules, generally poor people who wanted to make a big profit and who looked unsuspicious. The smugglers' imagination is almost limitless: nuns have been found with coke under their robes, disabled people with coke in their wooden legs. The exact number of people who cross in this way is unknown and the chance that they will be caught is therefore impossible to calculate. However, we do know that according to the Colombian Justice Department that deals with international affairs, no fewer than 11,633 Colombians were in prison abroad in 1994! By far the largest number are in the United States: 9,303. This is still the first market for drug traffickers and their large numbers are also caused by the long sentences that are imposed there. In Europe there are 2,255 and of these, as expected, most are in Spain (971) and smaller numbers in Germany (374), Italy (356) and France (202). 90% of these prisoners were arrested as couriers. In the Netherlands, the number of Colombians in prison that year was no more than 68. However, this is no indication of the relative unimportance of the Netherlands in this drug traffic. Here, only the opposite of what happens in the United States is evident: the sentences are relatively short. Soon, the engineers of the Colombian cartel organizations started sending much larger shipments across the ocean at once by including them in the sea freight in the legal trade stream. The first large catches were made in Spain, the cocaine was hidden in coconuts, in industrially manufactured nativity scenes and it was impregnated in Peruvian carpets. In Spain, 303 kilos of coke were seized in 1985, 669 kilos in 1986, 1130 kilos in 1987 and 3460 kilos in 1988. The great attraction for the Colombian cartels is the price per kilo, which is still very high, three or four times as much.
times as high as the dumped America. At the end of the eighties, important catches were also made in other countries. Following a find of 40 kilograms in Terressa near Barcelona, ??by following the main suspect, a large batch was found for the first time in the Netherlands: 130 kilos in Eindhoven.

In the previous chapters on Surinamese, Turks and Moroccans we paid attention to the history and social structure of their immigrant communities because the infrastructure for distribution exists in their circle and because these populations supplied the people who are involved in the drug trade. Operations of transnational criminal organisations of the mafia type were not discussed here, because they do not exist at all in the countries of origin or their international activities are of recent date. The cartels are such an organisation and the question is therefore to what extent the Colombian emigrant communities in the Netherlands also play a role in the drug trade. In the United States this role was clearly demonstrable, but what about in Europe? Pearse (1990), who describes the Colombian population group in the United Kingdom, explicitly raises this question. Even before Colombian drug traffickers were active in Europe, no fewer than 25,000 Colombians lived and worked in England, mostly in London and the surrounding area. There was clearly a surplus of women, and that was because they worked as domestic help. They used to be an unnoticed group, but since the first interceptions of drugs from Colombian passengers at British airports, they have been cast in a bad light. Pearce interviewed a number of these women and their story is about the exploitation of maids and au pairs, but not at all about the fate of drug couriers. Of course, they will also be among them, but according to her, one cannot say that the Colombian community in England has switched to the cocaine trade. So we should be cautious when we make statements about Colombians in the Netherlands.

In the meantime, the Colombians have provided themselves with a considerable trading base in Europe. Large and small shipments of cocaine (and marijuana too, by the way) have been intercepted in England, Germany, Belgium, Italy (the largest seizure made so far in 1994 in Livorno amounts to more than 5,000 kilos!), Switzerland, Denmark and of course the Netherlands. In the most recent reporting year, 1994, 18 tons of cocaine were intercepted in the whole of Western Europe. According to the ICPO (International Criminal Police Organization), Italy accounted for 6.6 tons, Spain for 3.8 tons, in the United Kingdom customs encountered 2.7 tons, in France against 2.2 tons, in Portugal the annual catch amounted to 1.6 tons, in Germany it was 0.7 tons and in Poland 0.5 tons was intercepted. The working methods of the Colombian exporters are rather crude and do not betray the fact that they are able to open entire lines through which the drugs can be imported without risk. The plomo o plata tactic does not work very well in Western Europe so far. Every now and then a trading company, a customs officer or a policeman is flattened, but the Colombians have not seen a chance to set up an unassailable logistical structure. An Amsterdam detective who knows the Colombian drug dealers in Europe like no other, has heard from their own mouths that they were deeply disappointed and also could not quite understand that not everything could be bought for money in Europe. Their clumsy shipping tactic now consists of placing very large consignments with legal shipments and hiding them in such a way that they get through without being noticed by the inspectors. Incidentally, they are incredibly clever at hiding them. In general, we can say that the cartel organisations control the supply by ship excellently until the first confrontation with the authorities in the ports of arrival. Based on analyses of drug seizures, witness statements, information from the Colombian police and statements from informants in Colombia and Europe (especially Germany), the CRI now estimates that 12 Colombian organisations (mostly from Cali) are active in the whole of Europe. Companies with a good name and reputation that have maintained regular trade relations with ports in South America for many years are worth their weight in gold to these organisations, because they will not be checked. The trick is to find out which companies lend themselves to a considerable additional income and which are in such financial difficulties that they can be made an offer they cannot refuse. There is no evidence that they have such intelligence in Western Europe.have access to information they obtain from the local underworld. However, they do not control the case at all and whether parties get through is still largely a matter of luck. According to Bettien M. (Bovenkerk (b), 1995: 181 ff) there was little choice but to sacrifice to the gods from their pantheon of the Santara religion with each mission.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, however, new opportunities have arisen. Only in Italy had the corruption of government officials been successful to a certain extent, and Operation Green Ice had revealed in 1992 that the Colombian cartels wanted to use this country as a supply house for Europe. However, the group arrested in this operation was about to travel on to Eastern Europe after a short break in the Netherlands to explore new opportunities there. There is a bureaucracy that is so poor and, after the fall of communism, perhaps also so cynical, that fruitful contacts can be made. If the drugs can enter via Bulgaria or Romania, they can be transported from there to the rich consumer market in Western Europe, and the markets of
Eastern Europe themselves are on the rise. At the moment, the image is that Colombian real or so-called students travel ahead to provide support points. The dealers come secondarily and open import and export companies. We do not know to what extent these new adventures are already successful.

Bettien Martens ( Haarlem , November 24, 1951 [ 1 ] ) was a Dutch criminal , better known as La Bella Bettien .

Martens was the daughter of an unmarried mother, which put her in a difficult position in the 1950s. She attended MULO , and proved to excel in the field of language in particular: she reportedly speaks eleven languages. [ 2 ]

Through bad friends, Martens got involved in the criminal circuit and became an important drug link between Colombia and Europe. [ 1 ] On September 24, 1992, she was arrested in Rome during the worldwide police operation Green Ice. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] The Italian justice system offered her a witness protection program to obtain full information about the criminal organization she worked for in exchange for a reduced sentence and long-term government protection from her former criminal connections. Martens accepted this offer and even testified against her Colombian bosses. [ 1 ] [ 3 ]

In the summer of 1994, she was released and disappeared with a new identity and a different appearance. Her whereabouts have been unknown since then. [ 1 ]

The blonde was called Bettien Martens, in Italy she would become known as La Bella Bettien, in the Netherlands as The Sorceress of money laundering, cartel members came up with the nickname 'La Mona' (The Pretty One). According to criminologist Frank Bovenkerk she was 'the go-between between drug organizations and underworlds in various countries'. In his book La Bella Bettien Bovenkerk wrote: 'Rarely had a Dutchman made it as far in the drug trade as she did.

Former informant Krisnapersath (Kris) J. was another Dutch who made it far in the trade. He worked at a high executive level within the Colombian Calí cartel with his help the Dutch government became one of the biggest drugs importeurs.