Italian Mafia Drug Trafficker Caught In Dubai

Rome, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Aug, 2021 ) :One of Italy's most wanted international drug barons has been arrested in Dubai, police said on Thursday, following more than six years on the run.

Raffale Imperiale, considered one of Italy's most dangerous fugitives, was a top operative from the organised crime world of Naples, who in 2016 was believed to have fled to the Gulf emirate.

He was arrested August 4 by Dubai authorities following coordination with Interpol and Europol, police in Naples said in a statement.

They described Imperiale, 47, as a "long-time top level player in international drug trafficking and money laundering" who over the years built up "an impressive network of international traffickers, in particular of cocaine." Italy's justice ministry was preparing extradition proceedings, police said.

Imperiale -- part of the Amato-Pagana clan within Naples' Camorra organised crime syndicate -- left Italy for Amsterdam in the 1990s to manage a coffee shop, and began allying himself with Dutch traffickers, according to Italian daily La Repubblica.

After first dealing in ecstasy tablets, he set his sights on the more lucrative cocaine trade, moving tons of drugs into Holland for the European market with the help of South American traffickers, while at the same time operating restaurants and investment companies, the paper said.

In 2016, Italian police found two Van Gogh paintings that had been stolen from Amsterdam's Van Gogh museum 14 years earlier inside a home outside Naples belonging to Imperiale.

The paintings -- "View of the Sea at Scheveningen" and "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen" -- were stolen in a daring heist.

Police on Thursday said a close cohort of Imperiale, Vincenzo Aprea -- a well-known Camorra boss now in prison -- had been able to buy the paintings on the black market using drug money.