Balkan cocaine traffickers have piggybacked on South America’s abundant exports to get cocaine aboard cargo ships, anti-narcotics officials say. A November 2010 raid by Brazil’s federal police near the port of Vitoria turned up 159 kilos of cocaine hidden inside ornamental stone blocks bound for Europe.

It was the handiwork of drug Godfather Slobodan Kostovski and his crew, authorities said.

In July 2010, the report said, Kostovski’s right-hand man, a Macedonian named Branislav Panevski, rented a discreet warehouse near Vitoria’s port to carry out the work. As the date for exporting the stones approached, Panevski told a Brazilian supplier that only one shipping company would do. “We only need MSC,” he said, according to a police transcript of the wiretapped call. MSC declined to comment on the police transcript.

Ultimately, the gang’s scheme foundered. In early November 2010, Brazil’s federal police raided Panevski’s warehouse, where they found nearly 159 kilos of cocaine hidden in one of the stones. Panevski and Kostovski were both arrested and received 20-year sentences for international drug trafficking. Sandra Kostovski, who helped finance her husband’s operation by smuggling cash into Brazil on flights from Europe, received a 14-year sentence. She is now free. She declined to comment.

Panevski was jailed in the western state of Mato Grosso do Sul. In 2019, he fled during a brief furlough, making his way with a fake ID to Bolivia, where he was eventually caught and returned to Brazil to serve his time. He has since been released, according to a federal police officer who is investigating Kostovski’s Brazilian network. Panevski could not be reached for comment.

Kostovski, too, slipped away during a 2018 prison furlough, using a false passport to return to Europe, according to the federal police officer.

Around that time, European police began to investigate two encrypted communications services – EncroChat and Sky ECC – that they believed were widely used by gangsters. Within a couple of years, French, Dutch and Belgian cops had tapped into the channels.

Across tens of millions of chats, they discovered a buzzing underworld ecosystem where suspects talked openly of drug smuggling, gun running and murder plots. EncroChat and Sky ECC have both ceased operating. But the repercussions of the intercepts continue to this day with more than 6,500 arrests since 2020, according to Europol.

The legality of the police intercepts has been challenged by convicted gangsters and their lawyers in appeals courts across Europe. In the United States, the prosecution of Gogic, the purported mastermind of the MSC Gayane shipment, rests in part on intercepted Sky ECC chats, according to his lawyer, who said he’ll dispute their admissibility. The US Department of Justice declined to comment.

European authorities have defended their methods as lawful and say numerous crimes were prevented by the intercepts. Europol said last year that these communications revealed “the important role of criminal networks … (from) the Balkan region in the global cocaine trade.”

In late 2021, when Belgrade police accessed the chats, they realised Kostovski was back in the game following his escape from Brazil, coordinating “drug shipments via encrypted platforms,” Serbian and Spanish police reports obtained by Reuters show.

For more than a year, cops tracked Kostovski as he met with associates across Europe purportedly organising what they believed would be a major load. By mid-2023, police had identified the vessel Kostovski allegedly planned to load with cocaine and sail across the ocean: the “Oceania Dos.” By the time it left the Brazilian city of Salvador last July, authorities on both sides of the Atlantic were tracking its every move.

“Balkan cartel sinks,” Europol declared after the August 24, 2023, seizure of the vessel and Kostovski’s arrest. Two months later in Brazil, authorities there nabbed another major Balkan Cartel trafficker: Aleksandar Nesic.

His father, Goran, had first arrived in Brazil in 2004 and within a few years, police said, the elder Nesic had become the leader of various interconnected Balkan cells across Brazil – including those of Kostovski and Perkovic – shipping Bolivian cocaine to Europe. Authorities said he also set about teaching his son Aleksandar the trade.

Goran Nesic, the central target of the Operation Niva probe, was convicted of drug trafficking in 2013 and received a 15-year sentence in São Paulo state. He was extradited back to Serbia in 2018 to serve an outstanding eight-year sentence, but is now free. Via his lawyer, Ortelio Viera Marrero, Goran Nesic declined to comment.

Aleksandar took the reins, Brazilian police allege, and set about putting his own mark on the family business. He had grown up in Guarujá near the Port of Santos, a major point of embarkation for cocaine leaving South America, authorities say. While his dad had favoured bribing Balkan seamen to move his product to Europe aboard cargo ships, police said, the younger Nesic turned to smaller vessels to evade tightening screening procedures at Brazilian and European ports.

Nesic allegedly bought cheap fishing boats that he retrofitted with extra fuel tanks, stuffed with cocaine, and staffed with Balkan or Brazilian crews to make the Atlantic crossing.

On April 1, 2022, the US Navy intercepted the Alcatraz I near Cape Verde, seizing nearly 5.5 metric tonnes of cocaine. It was one of the world’s largest coke seizures that year. US and Cape Verde law enforcement seized nearly 5.5 metric tonnes of cocaine from a Brazilian fishing vessel off the west coast of Africa on April 1, 2022. Brazilian authorities allege the load was financed by accused drug trafficker Aleksandar Nesic.

A few months later, on August 16, 2022, Brazil’s navy apprehended the Dom Isaac XII off the coast of northeastern Ceará state, finding 1.2 metric tonnes of cocaine on board.

“Aleksandar Nesic was the main financier (or buyer) of the loads of cocaine seized on the Alcatraz I and Dom Isaac XII vessels,” Brazil’s federal police wrote in a 2023 report about the operation, obtained exclusively by Reuters.

Nesic was arrested at his home in Guarujá on Oct. 5, 2023, and jailed pending trial. Now 31, he declined to speak with a Reuters reporter. His attorney, Marrero, who represents both father and son, said Aleksandar was innocent.

Despite some takedowns of major Balkan traffickers, they continue to flood Europe with cocaine due to their ever-evolving tactics, officials said. Custodio, the Brazilian detective who led the Aleksandar Nesic probe, said Balkan gangs used to create dummy companies to facilitate the movement of their drugs, but are now acquiring legitimate exporters.

A US counter-narcotics official who has worked with Custodio said Balkan gangsters “are the biggest locomotive driving” Europe’s booming coke trade. “They have refined their methodology – and it is working,” he said.

• A Reuters report