By Matthias Bartsch, Jürgen Dahlkamp, Jörg Diehl, Tobias Großekemper, Roman Lehberger, Claas Meyer-Heuer und Ansgar Siemens
It’s shortly before 6:30 p.m., and his girlfriend wants to know when he is going to finally come home. Back to Eitorf, a small town near Bonn. Habib I. is at an Autobahn rest stop some 300 kilometers away. He just told his girlfriend a few hours before that there was something he still had to do. Now, she’s asking again. When? Before midnight, he responds, hopefully. And then Habib I. makes a promise that so many others have made before him, even if they don’t really believe it themselves. That this will be his last deal. Just this last one, and that will be "the end.” But his girlfriend knows him. Yeah sure, he’s saying that now. But in five months, it will start all over again, she says.
Five? Not even one month passed before the next cocaine delivery, and Habib I. was again involved, if one can believe the police file. A case file that mentions "narcotics in not small quantities,” which could be the understatement of the century for drug investigators. The intercepted phone calls and surveillance photos paint a picture of the largest known amount of cocaine ever smuggled into Germany. One gang, 10 deliveries, 35.5 tons of cocaine, street value: 2.6 billion euros. A mountain of blow of a size never before seen in Europe – though likely only the tip of the iceberg. Investigators are certain that they haven’t come close to intercepting all of it.
In May, the authorities made their move, making seven arrests, including the 30-year-old Habib I. Düsseldorf prosecutors consider the Bulgarian national to be an important player in this gang that elevated cocaine smuggling to a whole new dimension. Habib I. is thought to have been the leader of the team assigned to extract the narcotics out of the containers once it arrived in the Port of Hamburg from South America.
Apparently also on August 17, 2023 – the day on which he promised his girlfriend that he was going to finally get out of the game. That afternoon, a truck laden with a container drove out of the port and onto the autobahn toward Bremen, followed by a Mercedes that Habib I. is thought to have been driving. The container was full of tropical wood, exclusive material for yachts and villas – according to the papers. Which makes it all the odder that the convoy ended up at a farmhouse at the edge of the tiny village of Kuhstedt – a place so dilapidated that it looked as though the farmer had long ago given up his battle with the soil and with the banks.
Five men were waiting to carry the wooden planks into a barn. The sixth, though, was apparently waiting in the Rhineland for news about what else might be in the container: Ümit D., 39, thought to be the leader of the gang in Germany. A man who used to be a member of the outlawed motorcycle club Hells Angels.
By 9:08 p.m., the men in Kuhstedt had seen enough. No cocaine, not a single gram. They closed up the container. Exactly 10 minutes later, a surveillance team of criminal investigators were watching as Ümit D. parked in front of a McDonald’s in Rhineland. How he jumped out of his BMW and walked agitatedly back and forth, yelling into his mobile phone. A coincidence? Or was this the moment that he realized that customs officials had already searched the container that morning back in the port and confiscated the goods? Not just a couple kilos, nor a couple hundred. It was 7.2 tons of coke worth hundreds of millions of euros. All of it gone.
Today, Ümit D. is sitting behind bars awaiting his trial. Habib I.’s girlfriend also no longer has to wonder when he is coming home. Not before midnight. And not after midnight either. It could be a couple of years.
SITUATION REPORT
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