DRUG SMUGGLERS' EUROPEAN UNION

Gungor Tekin was one of Turkey's most renowned international
footballers, a hero to the fans of not one but two of the country's
biggest clubs. This week he is starting a 23-year sentence in a
British jail after being convicted of a heroin smuggling operation
that has cast light on the new international links of the heroin trade.

What has emerged from the case and other recent operations is that
there is now a European criminal community that is cooperating far
more successfully than their ministerial counterparts. While eastern
European countries are still negotiating over entry into the EU,
criminal gangs across Europe have joined forces to exploit what is
still a growing market.

The Turkish, Bulgarian and Kosovan Albanian mafias have linked with
Czech couriers to supply British-based Turkish and English dealers
with heroin. Customs officers are frustrated that the organisers are
still sitting safely in Turkey.

Gungor Tekin played his football with the Turkish clubs Galatasaray
and Fenerbahce and later in Canada - but before the enormous explosion
in wages and signing-on fees. On retirement he aspired to a lifestyle
he could not afford. Initially he tried to set up a business exporting
black London cabs to Turkey. He also dabbled unsuccessfully in the
property market. Then contacts in the Turkish criminal underworld in
north London suggested that heroin was a simple way to recoup his
losses. Five years ago, he set up a base in a flat off the Edgware
Road in central London.

But his contacts soon brought him to the attention of Customs and
Excise investigators who put him under surveillance. He had hired a
young Turk, Mustafa Mus, as his driver and translator and linked up
with a third man, Yucel Konakli, who lived in the Turkish heartlands
in Haringey, north London.

Tekin flew backwards and forwards to Turkey and Northern Cyprus where
he dealt with one of the six main crime organisations running the
heroin trade there. He set up a 70 kilogram smuggling operation which
would have netted his team UKP6 million.

For this he needed a driver to bring the heroin through Europe. Turks
arriving with suspicious loads have recently fallen foul of Customs
intelligence operations so a Czech, Jan Jisl, was hired. He was told
to come with his wife and child to give the impression he was on a
family shopping holiday.

When he arrived at Ramsgate in a Czech-registered minibus, he was
immediately under surveillance.

He met his Turkish contacts in their car at the Travel Lodge on the
M2, little knowing that they were being followed all the way. They
were arrested in London when it was becoming obvious that they were
being tailed.

On Monday at Kingston crown court Tekin was jailed for 23 years,
Konakli for 18, Jisl for 16 and Mus for 11. The case has provided a
window into the new order of the heroin trade in Europe.

Jisl came from Liberic, near Prague. Another driver from the same town
was also arrested last year and jailed for 25 years. The town and that
area of the Czech republic have become a centre for exiled Kosovan
Albanians who provide the link in the heroin chain from Turkey.

Chris Harrison, the senior investigating officer with Customs who led
the operation, said yesterday: "The Turks are ingenious people. They
will use any method open to them."

Kosovan Albanians had now emerged as major players in the link between
the Turks and the eastern European couriers. This has prompted claims,
supported by some eastern European agencies, that the Kosovan
resistance is now being financed by the heroin trade.

Mr Harrison says that a percentage of the heroin profits may certainly
go to the Kosovan resistance but he believes that Kosovan drug
traffickers would be involved in the trade regardless of the conflict.

Kosovan Albanians have rented houses in villages outside Prague where
their deliveries from Turkey arrive via the Balkan route. Couriers
then take it to Germany and onwards to Belgium, Spain and the
Netherlands.

While the Kosovan Albanians have emerged as the new major players, the
Czech republic has established itself as the crossroads for east and
west traffic.

Earlier this year, Jiri Komorous, the Czech national drug squad chief,
said that his country had now become "the centre of the heroin and
cannabis trade in central Europe".

In another international link-up, Turkish traffickers have used
Bulgarian organised crime gangs to guard their shipments en route. One
of the routes is now through Bulgaria and on to Macedonia, Albania and
Italy.

The other new development has been the growing use of containers to
smuggle heroin following a significant number of seizures of lorries
with Turkish origins. Bulgarian police sources indicate that another
new route is via container from the port of Varna to ports in the UK
and Spain.

"There is no Mr Big, just a lot of people with good connections," said
Mr Harrison. "And they never step outside an area they don't control."

Checked-by: derek rea