InSight Crime published a list of seven “narco-fugitives” that were enjoying their illegal fortunes in Brazil. One of them, Rocco Morabito, has a life story fit for a gangster movie. 🧵👇
#CriminalThreads
Giuseppe Morabito – Rocco's father who was known as U’Tiradrittu, or “the straight shooter” –
was a premier figure within the 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate. Rocco later replaced his father within the organization.
Known as the “Cocaine King of Milan,” Rocco had a Red Notice issued against him by Interpol in 1995, when he traveled to Brazil under the alias “Francisco Antonio Capeletto Souza” and passed himself off as a Brazilian businessman working in the soy business.
Despite appearing on the list of Italy’s most wanted, Morabito settled down in Uruguay under a false identity, enjoying an opulent lifestyle for at least 13 years.
It wasn’t until Morabito enrolled his daughter in school under her real name that authorities identified him and launched an operation that lasted several months, leading to his arrest in a hotel lobby in Montevideo in 2017.
While awaiting extradition to Italy, Morabito escaped Montevideo's Central Prison around midnight on June 23, 2019, using a hole in the prison’s roof with three other detainees.
As reported by @elpais, Morabito chose a day when the video surveillance system was not active. "He climbed the walls and appeared in the apartment of a neighbor. Then he took a taxi, traveled to Minas, returned to Montevideo until [authorities] lost track of him."
In May 2021, two years after the prison break, Rocco was recaptured in the Brazilian city of Joao Pessoa, in an operation that involved the Brazilian police, Interpol, the DEA and the FBI.
Discover more about the six other drug traffickers who chose to hole up in Brazil. ⬇️
bit.ly/34nhLB4

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More from @InSightCrime

2 Jun
Last week the Swiss Bank Julius Baer admitted to laundering more than $36 million in bribes paid by sports marketing companies to soccer officials in exchange for broadcasting rights to soccer matches.

In this #CriminalThread, we look back on the FIFA corruption scandal.🧵👇⚽️ Image
In 2015, US authorities unveiled a sweeping, years-long probe into corruption within the international soccer organization known as FIFA. Millions of dollars in bribes were paid in exchange for marketing and broadcast rights.
bit.ly/3pamVde
Several Latin American media giants were at the heart of the scandal. Between early 2013 and mid-2015, the Swiss bank admitted to conspiring with a range of sports marketing executives to launder multimillion-dollar bribes paid to them and others.
bit.ly/3uHgy2g
Read 4 tweets
30 May
Organized crime has no borders, this is what the 5 most read articles this week on insightcrime.org indicate ⬇️ Image
5⃣The day after a gang member left the hospital, four hitmen entered the bedroom where he had been staying and shot dead an innocent woman 16 times. This was just the latest in a series of daring executions in Ecuador. insightcrime.org//news/brazen-a…
4⃣The wife of a drug kingpin was murdered in Guatemala. Within hours, he had murdered those allegedly responsible during a prison riot he instigated. The power of Los Leones is still something to be reckoned with. insightcrime.org/news/the-leone…
Read 7 tweets
10 May
Cocaine and heroin no longer rule the illicit drug market in the United States. Other substances have arrived to replace them.
How did this happen and why is it so concerning? 🧵⬇️ Image
We are talking about methamphetamine and fentanyl. The first, known on the streets as “meth,” is a powerful psychostimulant that releases dopamine by flooding the parts of the brain that regulate the sensation of pleasure.
Methamphetamine has managed to attract twice as many consumers as cocaine. According to @USCustomsandBo1, meth seizures are seven times higher than they were eight years ago: Image
Read 10 tweets
12 Feb
The last few years have been challenging for democracy and security in Honduras: from the undermining of an anti-corruption commission to the increasingly-evident link between organized crime and politics. InSight Crime has covered all of these dynamics 🧵👇(1/9) #bordercrime
Towards the end of 2019, we reported on the drug trafficking ring linked to Tony Hernández, the brother of Honduras’ sitting president, and analyzed the implications of this case on the nexus between politics and organized crime in the country. (2/9)
bit.ly/3pgub5u
Following the departure of the @OEA_MACCIH in January 2020, we warned about the possible future challenges for the anti-corruption fight in Honduras amid fewer measures available to hold powerful political elites accountable. (3/9)
bit.ly/3pgys9k
Read 9 tweets
17 Nov 20
This month, as InSight Crime celebrates 10 years of investigating organized Crime in the Americas, read this thread with 10 criminal economies that we have studied in depth.

#10YearsInSightCrime Image
Cocaine. More coca is being cultivated to produce this drug than ever before in Colombia, with traffickers snaking their way up through Central America to dispatch shipments that eventually reach consumers in the United States and Europe:
insightcrime.org/tag/cocaine/ (1/10)
Contraband. A gateway illicit economy for many of Latin America’s major drug traffickers, criminal groups throughout the region move everything from illicit cigarettes to gasoline and black-market medical equipment amid the coronavirus.
insightcrime.org/tag/contraband/ (2/10)
Read 12 tweets

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