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A decision by Romania’s Constitutional Court was one step closer to cracking down on a major criminal organized crime case, which targeted an undercover group profiled on drug trafficking that had ties to a notorious mafia cartel in Mexico.
The decision from which everything started was pronounced at the Bistriţa-Năsăud Court on November 6, 2020, with the defendants from Bistriţa, Alba and Cluj.
Negrea Marius Dorel (leader of the group) received the resulting sentence of 15 years and 3 months in prison for high-risk drug trafficking and establishment of an organized criminal group. Cociobea Alexandru received the resulting sentence of 8 years and 8 months in prison for complicity in high-risk drug trafficking and establishment of an organized criminal group. Popa Ilie Sorin and Zsigmond Francisc each received 9 years in prison, and Costea Costel was sentenced to 4 years, a sentence that will also be carried out in custody.
According to investigators, the group’s leader (Negrea Marius Viorel) had ties to cocaine suppliers in South America and clients in the UK. The defendants were truck drivers and carried drugs, especially cocaine. Based on this, the court ordered the special confiscation of the amount of 276,000 euros or the equivalent value of this amount on the date of actual payment.
The five must also pay legal expenses totaling 106,000 lei. All defendants have been in pre-trial detention since 2017 or 2018. The decision can be appealed to the Cluj-Napoca Court of Appeal.
Technical supervision samples, removed from archive
Things got complicated after the Court had to exclude all interceptions from the record as a result of the CCR’s decision that evidence obtained with the support of the SRI can no longer be used.
„Take note of the absolute nullity of the execution of the technical supervision mandates related to the authorizations issued by the Superior Court of Cassation and Justice in file No. 437 D / P / 2016 of the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Investigation Directorate of the Court Superior of Cassation and Justice-Crimes. of Organized Crime and Terrorism-Central Structure-Section for the Fight against Drug Trafficking, respectively: no.006026 / 12.22.2015. (…) Excludes from the probative material the records of results registration and the documents resulting from the aforementioned technical supervision activities. Orders the removal from the file of the documents related to the execution of the aforementioned technical supervision measures, with respect to which the absolute nullity was verified, of the supports containing the aforementioned interceptions, and the elimination of the rendering of the content of these conversations and references to them ”. minute.
Canceled evidence was crucial, and if investigators had not provided further evidence, the entire case would have been compromised and the criminals would have escaped with impunity. Fortunately, crimes could be proven with other evidence provided by investigators.
Poster european branch
The group to which the Romanians belonged would have been related to the Sinaloa Cartel, of Mexico, led in its heyday by “El Chapo” Joaquim Guzmán, one of the most violent and powerful in the world. According to investigators, the group’s leader (Negrea Marius Viorel) had ties to cocaine suppliers in South America and clients in the UK. The British newspaper The Times wrote in 2017, citing the National Crime Agency, that a European branch of the well-known cartel formed an alliance with an unnamed group in Romania, capable of “bringing large quantities of cocaine to the UK on a weekly basis. , using road trains “.
A spokesperson for the Agency said at the time: “In collaboration with international partners, we have identified a Romanian organized crime group with the ability to import large quantities of cocaine into the UK. Intelligence data showed that the Romanian organization is still supplied by a Mexican group linked to the Sinaloa Cartel. This network is supposed to continue to introduce large quantities of Class A drugs into the UK.
The searches of 2017
In September 2017, a major action was carried out by Romanian police forces in cooperation with international ones in several European states, in Bistriţa-Năsăud and in a town near Zlatna, in Feneş. Cociobea Alexandru, driver of an international transport company, was detained for 24 hours, for committing the crimes of forming an organized criminal group and complicity in the high-risk and high-risk drug trafficking.
In parallel, DIICOT prosecutors and the Europol and Eurojust police forces carried out nine more searches in Bistriţa-Năsăud, Neamţ and in Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands. According to DIICOT prosecutors, the investigation revealed that the group’s leader had ties to cocaine suppliers in South America and customers in the United Kingdom. Investigations started in February 2016 and international cooperation was initiated, through Europol and Eurojust, with Germany, Great Britain, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands, to document the criminal activity.
21 kg of cocaine, found in a truck
Compared with the accused Cociobea Alexandru, it was observed that in January 2017 he joined the organized criminal group formed in December 2016 by the accused Negrea Marius-Viorel, Zsigmond Francisc and others, an organized criminal group that he supported with his actions in the Romania territory but also abroad. In February 2017, the defendant recruited two Romanian nationals, whom he introduced to the coordinator of the criminal group, to transport high-risk drugs (cocaine from Belgium to Great Britain), circumstances in which he was rewarded with sums of money (plus of 9,500 euros). ).
Within the organized criminal group, the defendant deliberately helped to traffic the amount of approximately 21 kilograms of cocaine, by providing support to the driver of a road train, a Romanian citizen, to transport the amount of cocaine from the Netherlands to Great Britain, but in the route, on 03.09.2017, the British authorities (a team from the National Crime Agency) controlled the road train, on which occasion the amount of cocaine was found inside the trailer, hidden in the lining of a sofa ”, The DIICOT prosecutors also specified.
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