Big Italian drug trafficker betrayed by his love for billiards

[furiofromnaples]

https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cronac ... a18ac.html

Camorra boss Gustavo Nocella arrested in Colombia

He is considered the main link between the clans and the drug producers in the South American country

BOGOTA, October 22, 2024, 11:42

It was his passion for billiards that betrayed Camorra boss Gustavo Nocella, arrested today in Medellin, Colombia, after years on the run, thanks to an operation coordinated by the Colombian National Police (PNC), Interpol, Europol, the Carabinieri and the United Kingdom police.

The investigators, according to a note from the PNC, have in fact followed this lead to be able to identify yet another apartment rented in Medellin by the boss considered the main intermediary between the Camorra clans of North Naples and East Naples - the Rinaldi-Formicola, the Amato-Pagano and the De Micco - and the local drug cartels. The billiard tables were in fact the common denominator in all the homes previously occupied by Nocella, who moved every three months as a precaution but who evidently could not give up playing with the cue when he was not busy organizing shipments of tons of cocaine to Holland.

And it was precisely by following the trail of the purchase of a luxurious table with red cloth made at the Europa factory in Bogota that the investigators managed to trace the last luxurious apartment rented by the boss in the elegant El Poblado neighborhood of Medellin, surrounded by shops and shopping centers. The 58-year-old Nocella was responsible for coordinating the logistics of the shipments of cocaine cholehydrate on ships and sailing boats headed to the port of Amsterdam. The drugs, investigators reconstruct, were then sent to Naples by land, aboard trucks, cars and sometimes counterfeit official vehicles. "This operation is the result of fluid international cooperation that has allowed us to capture more than 40 drug traffickers," said today the director general of the Colombian National Police, General William René Salamanca Ramírez. "The capture of Nocella, one of the most wanted mafiosi in the world," he added, "is a mortal blow to these criminal clans." According to Salamanca, today's arrest "affects the connections of international drug trafficking by directly affecting the ability to coordinate the obtaining, transportation, storage and export of cocaine."