Sicilians- Kings of heroin;Medellin- Kings of Coke

In the 1980s, the Medellin Cartel was clearly at the top of the criminal underworld. They controlled approximately around 80% of the global cocaine trade. I believe that the Sicilians controlled the heroin trade at the same time. And I have been told on here that they used to trade cocaine for heroin during that time and Escobar was actually heavily influenced by Toto Riina(which amazes me because the guy ran his organization into the ground with his blood thirsty ways). How much of the heroin trade did the Sicilians control? Were like the Medellin cartel equivalent except for heroin at that time, and what was more profitable? I’m going to guess cocaine as the cartel was making more cash.

I think that the cocaine trade and heroin trade are really different. At the time, when the Medellin cartel were the top cartel in the world, they were the producter of cocaine and the distributor.

While, for heroin, the italian mafia were probably the top distributor in america, but they were not producer of heroin.
The producer were people from asia. Countries like vietnam, thailand and afghanistan.

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/09/nyregion/chinese-now-dominate-new-york-heroin-trade.html

Interesting article. This may have been around the time that the Sicilians started to falter a little so I can see the chinese jumping at the chance of distributing some of their product directly to the customer instead of through a middleman(the Sicilians). At one point the Sicilians did dominate heroin. It was really the ndrangheta as well as the casalesi clan who saw the future in cocaine and invested in it early on from what I read.

sicily was full of heroin labs at that time, the biggest produced 6 tons yearly, and it was distributed in both europe and united states
also, the colombians at that time had not a big networks of distributors like sicilians had in europe and united states, so the earnings diminished because the drug passed through too many hands

In the 1980s the opium come on sicily from Turkey and was transformed in heroin and distributed in america and europe. The sicilians lost the monopoly on heroin because the italian state hitted hard the drug traffickers and the drug labs in sicily and the coke slowly replaced heroin as more profitabe drug.
Plus in the late 1980s the mafia both in sicily and the USA was decimated by rats and killings and the american cousins decided to split by her cousins 'cause Riina violence.
While the chinese mafia was more tight and efficient.

In Europe, Chinese OC has always been involved in heroin in a major way. From as early as the 70's, big time drug dealers from the Netherlands, France, Belgium...made frequent trips to Chinese restaurants in Amsterdam to get their heroin supply. The Cantonese 14K Triad had a lot of power in that business in the early 70's, but when law enforcement started to close in on the Cantonese, the Singapore-based Ah Kong came into play. The Ah Kong filled the void the 14K left had most of the Chinese heroin trade in Europe down from the mid 70's to the mid 80's. Although they were regarded as a Singapore-based Triad, its members had mostly roots in the Fujian province and family members who lived in for instance Mainland China and Malaysia were part of the Triad as well. Unlike the Hong Kong-based Triads, the Ah Kong has gone supposedly extinct, but they were an extremely powerful (and extremely vicious) Triad in their prime. They were a source of heroin for tons of traffickers throughout Europe and I'm willing to bet that most of the heroin in Brussels (which was a huge heroin market those days) could be traced back to them.

The Sicilian mafia was definitely involved in heroin as well, but in Europe I don't think they were as big as a source as the Chinese were in the 70's and 80's. Especially from the mid 70's to mid 80's with the Corleone-Palermo conflict, a lot of European traffickers did business with the Chinese instead. The USA is a different story.

The role of the Corsicans, even during the 70's and 80's, isn't to be underestimated either when it comes to the European heroin business. Even though the days of the "French Connection" were long gone, they were definitely still involved. They hid very well, but in the Brussels area there were dodgy characters from the Corsican underworld active. There are reports of a local criminal being sighted with one or two Corsicans at some cafe only to float up dead a week later in a place as far away as Le Havre.
I remember a story my uncle (who's from the Brussels region) told me that in the 70's he had some shady neighbor who he had seen talking with a few Corsicans repeatedly for some time. One day the guy packed his bags, left Brussels and supposedly moved to the South of France. A few weeks later they allegedly found his charred corpse with a bullet in the brain in the trunk of some burned-out car. Almost as if being sighted with a Corsican was an impending death sentence for mid-level criminals in those days.

The Colombian community was never as huge in Europe and even the USA as the Italian community is, but they definitely had their distribution cells. In Amsterdam in the late 70's and throughout the 80's there were Colombian criminals hiding who could provide the necessary. In the USA, especially on the East Coast, there were Colombian crime groups active in the wholesaling of cocaine. Lots of them in the Miami area and quite a few in New York as well.

In Europe the hashish business was under the control of the Dutch criminal organizations in the 70's and 80's. Even before Klaas Bruinsma you had Piet Clement and Henk Rommy ("The Black Cobra", a Surinamese guy, but his entourage was largely Dutch) who were behind enormous hashish transports. Piet Clement for instance used the Antwerp port to smuggle in tons of hashish in containers filled with entrails for the slaughterhouses.

The 70's and the 80's were shady as hell.

Good summary TKJ, don't forget the Russians they have always been involved in heroin.

Never knew the Chinese were huge in heroin to that extent. Makes me ask why they weren’t talked about as much as the Sicilians when it came to heroin trafficking. Every documentary I see on it, they say Sicily was raking in most of the heroin profits as well as controlling most of the heroin trade.

Great overview. My only question is, why did the Ndrangheta go to the Chinese for heroin exactly? Couldn’t they have just gotten it from the sicilians? Or did they want to get their supply straight from the source instead?

Really? They made their own brand that has been killing people for years now, 'China White' is fentanyl not heroin. And it's been coming into this country for 100 years now.

You wanna pay your buddy around the corner $3500 for a pound of loud or, drive a day or two and pay $1000?

In this case I can only speak for Belgium, but large scale Russian involvement in heroin was only reported in the early to mid 90's in Antwerp. You had the group around Boris Nayfeld and Rachmiel Brandwain that supposedly imported and distributed millions worth of heroin in the Antwerp area. Later on there was also the involvement of the Abraham Melikhov and his clan; they distributed the stuff as well as used it to get the prostitutes addicted who worked for them.
Heroin was just part of the activity for the Russians. In reality most of them in Antwerp were Jews from Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia who had Israeli passports. Antwerp has a large Jewish community so they just tried to blend in and even "bought" themselves in. Lots of honest Jewish shopkeepers were offered insane amounts of money to hand over their establishments that the mafiosi could use to launder their illicit proceeds. If they couldn't be bought out, they were kicked out. The Russian criminals got busy with heroin trafficking, prostitution, forgery, theft...

The Netherlands has always been a major wholesale distribution point in that regard. A lot of crime firms from the Southeast, Merseyside, Glasgow or Dublin for instance travel to the Netherlands to make huge heroin deals. All the while in the UK there are definitely a lot of Indian and Pakistani groups in places like Luton, Middlesbrough, Bradford...as well as Kurdish groups in North London that are able to get in a lot of smack. Yet it seems that Scouse and Irish criminals in particular still prefer to do business with the groups that are active in the Netherlands.

The heroin business in the Netherlands knows many actors who come and go only to show up again when another type of group gets caught. When the power of Ah Kong was severely diminished, you had the Serbian clans that supplied a lot of the heroin market in the late 80's to early 90's. Sreten Jocic, connected to the Surcin clan, was of course the most famous of them, but others like the Zemun clan definitely showed up in Amsterdam as well.
Then when the spotlights were on the Serbs, the Turks cornered most of the market. At first the Black Sea-based groups, like the Oflu clan, carried on their heroin business (they had already been active since the late 90's in the Netherlands, at the same time the Serbs were), but when things got a bit too heated for the Turks you had a lot of Southeast Anatolia-based Kurdish groups that were moving tons of smack up until the early 2000's. Many of them were also connected to the Baybasin clan.
When the Kurds got nicked, I think it were the Albanians that came to prominence since the early 2000's in the heroin business. These days it seems a lot of Albanian groups are getting caught as well so who knows who's next to step in. None of those groups ever completely quit the smack business. They stay active in some way and slow down whenever law enforcement turns their interest on them.

The heroin business in Western Europe isn't as huge as the cocaine business. Come to think of it, it's crazy when I realize how many cocaine users I know personally while I don't know anyone who's addicted to heroin. In the bigger cities the demand is still there though. And that demand is still big enough to make sure there's more than a few groups that can get wealthy enough off heroin alone.

Good infos guys.

Look like the heroin trade was more diverse than the cocaine trade.

It wasn't specifically the Ndrangheta. The Ndrangheta were definitely already active in the Brussels region in the late 70's/early 80's but they weren't as huge as they're now. Back then the direct Ndrangheta operations in Belgium were mostly active in tobacco smuggling; which then was an area most criminals didn't consider yet. When it comes to heroin in those days, at least in Brussels, the Ndrangheta wasn't a major player.

The biggest distributors of heroin in the early 80's in Brussels were, believe it or not, French. The biggest fish got his heroin - which was then more common than cocaine - from the Chinese (the Ah Kong Triad - for which his group first travelled to Amsterdam and later on most of the business was conducted in Bangkok), his cocaine from the Italians (a member of his group was caught in Rome while smuggling cocaine, presumably from the Ndrangheta), his hashish from the local Dutch underworld ('penoze') in Amsterdam and his weapons from the Corsicans and the Lebanese. He was also active in the stolen arts business with the Corsicans.

So if I get it right
In the 70s and 80s, heroin was made by poppy plants in place like the afghanistan or vietnam, thailand.
But the substance of the poppy plants were transformed in labs by italian, chinese or coriscan groups? Or didnthe afghan and asians already sold the product finished to the italians or other groups?

The Chinese, Italians, Corsicans, Vietnamese...mostly got the raw opium poppy product from the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia.

The Chinese were active in selling the finished product from the beginning.
The Vietnamese distributed the finished product as well since the late 80's whenever considerable Vietnamese communities were formed in Western cities.

The Corsicans sourced the base for heroin directly from Laos and refined it in labs around Corsica and Marseille. When the 'French Connection' came to an end, the Sicilians did the same in Sicily. The Sicilians also got a lot of the morphine base from Turkey and Lebanon.

In Afghanistan there are a lot of poppy fields, but Afghans don't seem to be involved in the direct wholesale of the finished product. I'm sure it does happen, but it doesn't seem to be endemic. The finished product that comes from the poppy fields in the Middle East is mostly distributed by a myriad of other groups: Turkish (Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France), Kurdish (Netherlands, Germany, UK), Albanian (Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, UK, France), Serbian (Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, France), Pakistani (mostly UK), Indian (UK, Canada), Chechen (Russia, Ukraine, Baltic States, Germany, France), Armenian (Russia, Ukraine, Baltic States, Spain, France), Georgian (Russia, Ukraine, Baltic States, Spain, France), Azerbaijani (Russia, Ukraine, Baltic States, France), Lebanese (Germany, Australia, Canada). I'm guessing here, but I assume it's mostly the groups from Turkey that refine the stuff and then it's passed on to the other groups.

The Russian Slavic and Jewish groups mostly seem to traffic in heroin from Southeast Asia. I think they source it from the Chinese.

And the Turkish and Kurdish bosses huge players till this day responsible for loads of heroin here in NL. Also plenty of recent murders on Dutch soil.

Not just there, almost all Heroin in Balkans come from Turkey & Kosovo

sicilian mafia supplied the whole italian market that alone was very big and to a lesser extent other places like germany, switzerland, france and uk, so i don't think chineses were the biggest source in europe at that time, they supplied the benelux area mostly

Italy I'm sure and I'm not too sure about Germany or Switzerland - any of the big three Italian types of OC, Sicilian mafia, Ndrangheta, Camorra, have always had a major presence in Germany so it's plausible - but France or the UK is a different story.
In the south of France I'm sure the Sicilians did have quite a large share of the market down that neck of the woods. The northern French criminal milieu though was the one that had a large share of the retail market in Belgium as well and I know for a fact that their #1 source for heroin were the Chinese. Adding to that, in Paris for instance a lot of heroin was imported by Chinese as well as Vietnamese groups.
The heroin business in the UK in the 70's to early 80's was largely traced back to the Chinese as well. Due to the historical relations of the British with the Cantonese there was quite a Cantonese community living in London in particular those days. The Chinese imported a lot of heroin over there, which was distributed by local British firms. I haven't come across a source that states the Italians had a big involvement in UK's heroin trade in the 70's and 80's.

The Sicilians were the biggest source for heroin in Italy, the USA and few other pockets in Europe. Italy and the USA alone were HUGE markets.
Netherlands, northern France, Belgium, UK though? That was largely Chinese and were big smack markets as well.

Sounds like the Chinese were the de facto kings of heroin. But I would assume that the Sicilians were more powerful and wealthy based on other rackets.

sicilians had a grip in uk, mostly london, germany, switzerland, south france and spain, of course not even close to italy where they supplied the whole market, north italy was dominated by sicilian clans at that time and they supplied banda della magliana in rome
they supplied both usa and canada outside europe

Honestly I never read about Sicilian mafia activity of any sort, leave alone heroin, anywhere in the UK - especially not during the 70's and the 80's.
Aside from a Camorra group that launder money in Aberdeen as well as the occasional mafia fugitive that goes into hiding in the UK, there's little in the way of major Italian OC activity in the UK.

they had not families and that stuff, they had a network of people to sell heroin on the wholesale level, i read a couple of articles from the '80 about it
i don't see why to surprise, there was a big italian community in london, mostly in brighton
if chineses who are less than italians in europe supplied so many countries like you said, it's logic sicilians had a big impact producing heroin in europe itself

Alfonso Caruana was living in London, during 80's , supervising heroin trade. He had huge mansion there, his main partner in London was Francesco Di Carlo , he is accused of murder of Roberto Calvi the CEO of Banco Ambrosiano.

Ah yes, you're right, Caruana did have a mansion in London and in the mid 80's Di Carlo got busted for smuggling hashish and heroin.



In general there are less Chinese in Western Europe than Italians, but cities like Amsterdam or London always had a more visible (and presumably bigger) Chinese community than an Italian one.

And I don't want to act surprised, but it's just that I can't seem to find any source anywhere about huge Sicilian involvement in heroin trafficking in the UK. From the information that I gathered, it seemed that the Chinese had a bigger involvement in heroin in London. Though you of course never know what goes on beneath the surface.

I feel the same way. It’s a little difficult to find hard numbers on the Sicilians and ndrangheta. The Camorra has had many members who have had their net worths estimated through asset and drug seizures, but the ndrangheta and Sicilians not so much. But the ndrangheta as of late has had a lot of seizures, just not on too many individuals.

i never said they had a huge impact in london, i just said they were involved like ndrangheta can be involved in some countries today, just network of people in the wholesale distribution, no structure of family, just network
it's like tons of criminal groups work in europe today, they are mostly network of people involved in drug stuff, they don't control the territory like an organized crime group usually does

I wasn't really talking about controlling territory either. It's just that there's little to find even on Sicilians being notably involved in wholesaling heroin in the London area. I'm sure it happened (and who knows it still happens), but I just don't think they were the main source for heroin in London in particular.

The Sicilians gave the Colombians “military” advice during their war against the state

I’ve read this before. Like I said, I read that Escobar really looked up to Riina.

Sorry, I was more posting the article in case anyone else didn’t get what you were referring to with Escobar and Riina. Wild story if you ask me!

Very wild. I was surprised because I did not know that Escobar was inspired by any criminal figure. And definitely didn’t think he was so influenced by someone modern. I would’ve thought that he’d look at Riina as competition as well was an ally.

Some Camorra members were worth hundreds of millions or even billions because of the cocaine trade among other things. Carmine Alfieri was worth an estimated $1.2 billion. Michele Zaza was worth an estimated $700 million. And the Nuvolettas has legal assets at around $280 million. I’m sure there are more. Bardellino was worth just as much I would assume.

Salvatore Zazo might aswell be in that league. According to DEA he was handling about 500 million euro worth of drugs each year... LE seized assets from his clan for about 400 million dollars, hotels and shit.

not so difficult, for example police seized about 5 billions from messina denaro (the richest boss in italy and among the richest worlwide) so far, 400 millions from the businessman and politician giuseppe acanto member of the villabate family, and tons of other seizures from multiple families, same for the ndrangheta
sicilian mafia is the organization with the hioghest number of assets seized, more than half in total in italy

honestly, even if chinese really supplied the whole (100%) of belgium, netherlands, london and northern france (and i highly doubt it, do you have statistics about it?)), it would be less than sicilians supplied, italy heroin market alone was bigger than belgium/netherlalds/northern france, and sicilians had grips in other countries too

First of all, I probably shouldn't have argumented for the whole of "Europe" since in reality I only know about the huge Chinese involvement in heroin in the Benelux, northern France and London. That was a bit of a mistake, since the Sicilians definitely supplied the whole of Italy, most of Southern France and probably a lot of Germany as well (and I have no reason to doubt this). So the Sicilians definitely had a giant share of the market. The point I was trying to make is that even at their heroin-selling peak they weren't the sole supplier and didn't have 100% of the European market. The Chinese were definitely behind a ton of heroin hitting Europe as well. Did they have a bigger share of the market than the Sicilians? I can't make a clear cut case for this, but what I do know that the Sicilians didn't have the complete 100% monopoly position in Europe.


"(and i highly doubt it, do you have statistics about it?)"


Now this is where you shit the bed. Are you serious?
Thus far you couldn't provide me with a single source about your "Sicilians showering the entirety of London in heroin" claims aside from you claiming to have "read some articles in the 80's" about this (articles which seemed to have vanished in thin air). And now "you" are gonna ask "me" for sources. LMAO, be real.

Look, if you're gonna keep on beating this dead horse and if you're gonna keep on reviving this argument until we both weigh an ounce just because I "dared" to claim your beloved Sicilian mafia didn't have the complete heroin monopoly in Europe from 1975 to 1985...I'm not feeling like the headache's worth it.
I'll let you have what your heart desires the most: YES, the Sicilians provided ALL of North America with heroin. YES, the Sicilians provided ALL of Europe with heroin. You know what? The Sicilians provided the ENTIRE WORLD with heroin. And possibly some of Mars as well.

i never said sicilians supplied 100% or they were the only european supplier, and even united states/canada, i just said they were the main suppliers in both continents, i don't know if 80 or 50 or what percent, i don't say bullshit like gratteri said ndrangheta supplies 80% of european cocaine, that is obviously a bullshit, since there are other groups involved like dutch, montenegrins, camorra and others
and anyway they produced it in sicily
concerning london i just said they had a grip too, chineses and turkish were the biggest suppliers of course

I never heard of him. I’ll have to look him up. I read that Michele Zaza had a brother named Salvatore. Are you referring to him or if this someone else

yes, the man he was talking about was the brother of michele zaza, its the same criminal group, and the assets seized belonged to the whole group

I know about Denaro but who are some other big Sicilian mobsters whose assets have been seized? I know Riina has around $125,000,000 seized.

of course there are, but mostly the italian police said they are seized from a family not a single boss, for example the graviano brothers had about 100 millions seized, santapaola from catania tons of assets seized in multiple operation worth to hundred millions, you should look at all the anti-mafia operations in the latest 20 years, hard to find, but there are national statistics about it, and sicilian mafia is by far the group with the most assets seized
i bet badalamenti, inzerillo and bontade families are extremely rich, but their assets are mostly outside italy south america/united states/canada and they were not seized according to wiretaps, nino rotolo said it
where you heard riina had 125 millions seized? i never heard it

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/49333...t-worth-wife-ninetta-bagarella-children/

Never heard of 125 millions seized from Riina. Almost all old school mafia families from Sicily are extremely rich,

But over $125million — probably just a fraction of his fortune LOL

Don't trust news articles like this, where did they come up with 125$ million , his fortune was much bigger.

I don’t think they were saying that was his whole fortune. Just a seizure of some of his assets.

Even if Riina’s family secretly knows of valuable assets or sources of income that are not known by the government, then they still can’t spend/sell any of it without the government being on top of it and seizing it right?

italy has the hardest laws against organized crime in europe, so the only way is to invest in the ue
ue countries still go behind drug dealers and pimps, they can't even undertand how really dangerous is an organized crime groups invested money and pulled the economy and the politics
in some years they would be forced to an ue organized crime law when they would be litterally submerged by mafia money

If Riina had legitimate businesses that generated income, how would it work then?

The Cali cartel is underrated..

Them and Medellin probably made more money than any criminal org on record. At least that’s who I’d put my money on no pun intended.