They arrested Camorra boss Raffaele Imperiale, one of the most wanted international drug traffickers in Dubai

Raffaele Imperial, took into consideration one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers and one of the country’s most wanted criminals and that it was operating on behalf of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, was arrested in an international operation, reported the Financial Guard today.

Imperial, born in 1974 in Castellammare di Stabia, was arrested in Dubai on August 4, although to date, the joint operation of the Guard of Finances and the Police of Naples (south), in collaboration with the Service of International Police Cooperation, Interpol and Europol, coordinated by the Neapolitan Prosecutor’s Office, has not not reported.

The arrested man was wanted and arrested since January 2016 for international drug trafficking and the The Italian Ministry of Justice has already started the extradition request procedure as soon as possible, Police sources said in a statement.

Imperial’s criminal career began in the 90s, when he started his activity as a drug dealer in Amsterdam, where he managed a store for the sale and consumption of cannabis (“coffee shop”) from which he began to seal alliances with various South American cartels import medicines, in particular cocaine, to the main drug trafficking points in Naples and its province, also through an alliance with the Camorra Amato-Pagano clan.

The newspaper Lto the Republic stipulate that Imperiale had created a triangular import network: from Holland to Colombia, via Spain, where they explain that he called himself “Rafael Empire” and where he had opened several restaurants and investment companies.

But later it moved its headquarters to Dubai and there lived with his family in the Burj Al Arab, the sail-shaped hotel considered one of the most exclusive in the world.

In recent years, the police have managed to carry out numerous arrests and seizures of narcotics that have affected the Imperial criminal organization, such as a cache of 1,330 kilos of cocaine in Paris on September 20, 2013.

This operation led to the arrest of one of his henchmen, Vincenzo Aprea, who had been tasked with overseeing the importation of the narcotic from Caracas on a scheduled Air France flight.

Imperiale had already been arrested once in 2014 and the Spanish national court had requested his surrender for his participation in six drug trafficking operations carried out between November 2012 and September 2013, but extradition never took place.

Italian police raided one of their homes in 2016, on the outskirts of Naples, and found two paintings by Van Gogh stolen from the Dutch painter’s museum in Amsterdam, 14 years earlier, in a bold move. The works had a estimated value of around 130 million euros.

(With information from EFE and AFP)

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