FSB's drug trafficking ring in Europe
Former FSB agent who fled to the United States shares more information on the FSB's criminal operations around the globe.
2nd part of Vladimir Osechkin’s interview of Pavel Belomestnykh, former FSB agent who fled to the United States.
You can read the 1st part here:
Next is the subject of FSB’s drug trafficking operations in Europe.
The method by which the FSB recruits the criminal underground in Europe. A group of Moldovan citizens work for the FSB. Pavel is aware of this because he was asked for advice and help in opening up fake companies for FSB’s operations. He knows that Ministry of Internal Affairs in Russia had even detained the Moldovan criminals working for the FSB, but they were forced to release them. The Russian border guards caught the criminals crossing the border but they were then told that they did not see anything.
There’s a town called Huelva in southern Spain. 2nd city is Malaga. Drugs are trafficked from there to Moscow. Also, Madrid in Spain, and in France both Leon and Paris were used as hubs. Frankfurt and Berlin in Germany. Then Baltic countries and Belarus – which is important, and of course Russia.
Note that none of those European countries have any effective customs checkpoints between them.
Just like the operations in North America utilizing forged identity documents, European drug trafficking operations are also led by the 2nd and 5th Service of the FSB. Pavel also heard rumors that the FSB Service responsible for Economic Security is also involved in drug trafficking.
The FSB appears to enjoy more success in Europe from this perspective than in North America. For example they did make an attempt, although unsuccessful, to assassinate Osechkin. The FSB did successfully assassinate Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in the center of Berlin in 2019. They recently made an attempt on Tumso Abdurakhmanov. Osechkin adds that Tumso is probably ok, and Pavel stresses that European security services wouldn’t have acted like they did unless there was a good reason to, in protecting Tumso.
Back to drug trafficking in Europe – the cars used was registered to fake companies created using forged identities. Mercedes Benz E-Class Wagons, Audi A6 Wagons, BMW 5-Series – cars that were typically 5-7 years old, so they can pass off for family cars so as not to attract attention in countries like Germany, France, and Spain. These vehicles went to Baltic countries with their European license plates where the drugs would be loaded into cars with Russian license plates at safe houses. Typical Russian plated cars were Toyota Land Cruisers, Nissan Patrols & Pathfinders. There was a case where the Russian border guards at the Pskov-Riga checkpoint at the Latvia-Russia border took the car to secondary and X-rayed the entire vehicle, and clearly saw the drugs in the frames of the car. They found either 50kg or 100kg of hashish, which would carry a 25 years to life prison sentence.