Operation Korn
The operation grain was in May 1983, a coordinated police operation of three countries to a drug transporting heroin from Turkey to Italy to monitor and ensure the drugs at the delivery location. Since the transport was organized by smugglers and their backers in Switzerland , the drug department of the city of Basel had also taken the lead in managing the operation .
Organization of the operation
The operation was triggered on May 19, 1983 from Basel. The Swiss police from five cantons , the Italian police in Milan and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in Wiesbaden were involved in the operation. According to information from the investigators, the transport should comprise 210 kilograms of heroin and be driven from Istanbul to Milan in several trips with a truck. The delivery came from an underground organization in Turkey and was destined for the Italian mafia . The financial processing should take place via a bank in the canton of Ticino and watch companies in Biel .
Transportation and the arrests
The truck was driven by a Turkish national and a Mercedes-Benz passenger car accompanied the transport. On May 19, 1983, the Swiss police arrested a total of twelve Turks, including the driver of the transport. On June 6, 1983, the police in Milan confiscated part of the 35 kilograms of heroin that had been transported. After the driver was arrested, he described all the details of the transport. In thirteen trips he had transported 90 kilograms to Milan, and for 30 kilograms he received 4,000 francs as a reward. The Swiss public prosecutor later demanded twenty years imprisonment against him in the trial. In this trial he confessed that 210 kilograms of heroin had been transported to Milan.
The money laundering
In the course of the investigation, the Turkish police arrested the chief of the gang and eleven of his subordinates. He owned a chain of restaurants in Turkey and dominated some of the illegal gambling there. The heroin was paid for by members of the Italian mafia to the owner of a finance company in Ticino, who passed the money on to a branch of a Zurich bank in Chiasso . The money was then transferred via several stations to Biel, where it was received by a watch dealer from Lebanon in Biel who ran the Abiana company there .
Documentary and obstruction of the Swiss police
After the arrest of a key member, the Biel judiciary and not the judiciary in Basel took over his prosecution. Within a month he was able to move freely and on November 20, 1988 the examining magistrate dropped the case against him. The Swiss documentary filmmaker Otto C. Honegger made a film with the title Operation K - 210 Kilograms of Heroin and the Consequences about this operation, which was first shown on December 13, 1984. He had to cut out some parts of the film that concerned scenes from the bank.
When the Swiss police wanted to forward search results to the Italian police, they were first forbidden by the Swiss federal prosecutor's office. The reason given was that the information would relate to fiscal offenses that are not punishable in Switzerland. No punitive measures were taken against any financial institution in Switzerland through which the heroin money laundering was carried out, since such behavior is only punishable from 1990 onwards.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jürgen Roth, Berndt Ender: Dark men of power . Bornheim-Merten, 1984, pp. 200-202. ISBN 388977007X
- ↑ Frank Garbely, Pascal Auchlin: The environment of a scandal . Zurich 1990, pp. 135-138. ISBN 3859320319 ISBN 9783859320314
- ↑ [1] ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Frank Garbely, ibid, p. 138
- ↑ Art. 305bis StGB
