WHEELING AND DEALING PICKS UP THE PACE

Poland used to be only a route for drug smuggling from East to West. Now,
however, it's a major cocaine and heroin market, too.

Polish police officers have seized hundreds of kilograms of heroin in
recent weeks, and 20 dealers and drug runners have been imprisoned. This
proves that Poland-already known as a major amphetamine producer-has also
become an important crossroads for cocaine and heroin smuggling.

"Only the ringleader escaped," reported the Wroc3aw Province Police
Headquarters. "His right-hand assistant and the rest of the gang are behind
bars." At the end of last year, the police broke up Poland's biggest gang
of heroin smugglers. The operation ended with the seizure of 160 kg of the
drug and the imprisonment of 18 people.

"The investigation began in the summer of 1995, when the Bundesgrenzschutz
[German border guards] caught three residents of Wroc3aw trying to smuggle
100 kg of pure heroin from Poland into Germany," said Captain Stanis3aw
Stygar, spokesman for the Wroc3aw police. "Two months later, British
customs officials found 60 kg of the same drug on a ferry at Dover."

Police informers had been saying that a large group of smugglers was
operating in the city. "After the outbreak of war in the former Yugoslavia,
heroin smugglers from Turkey had to find new routes, so they chose Poland,"
said Stygar.

The Wroc3aw police turned for help to the State Protection Office, Saxony's
Landeskriminalamt and the British Customs Office. A 10-person task force
was formed at Wroc3aw province headquarters. The investigation-involving a
search for informers and following couriers-lasted over a year. Finally,
last summer, the arrests began. However, the alleged ringleader-a Turkish
citizen-managed to escape. The police know his identity and have his
description. Now he is on Interpol's wanted list.

"We don't know whether he got away by accident, or whether he has `friends'
in the police" said Stygar. "We caught 30-year-old Agnieszka B., his
right-hand assistant, at the last moment. When the police came for her, she
already had her plane tickets to Istanbul in her handbag."

Most of those arrested refused to testify against their partners, but the
investigators managed to reconstruct the smugglers' trail. The drugs had
been shipped from Turkey to ports in Ukraine. There, they had been
transferred to cars and crossed the borders into Poland, Germany, France,
Britain and Spain. "We can prove that 700 kg of heroin were sent along this
route," said Stygar. "But there could have been much more-over a ton." On
the black market in Poland, a kilogram of heroin costs more than zl.200,000.

Agnieszka B. recruited her couriers by looking for people with financial
difficulties. The couriers had to meet two conditions: They had to be about
30 years old and have a clean police record. "The offer was tempting: 1,000
Deutschemarks (DM) for each kilogram smuggled," said Stygar. They smuggled
20-30 kg of heroin each, which they hid in car fuel tanks.

The Wroc3aw police gave assurances that it would not be so easy to set up
new routes to smuggle drugs into Western Europe, saying that all the
groups' contacts have been intercepted. "They will have to start a new
search to find the people they need-and that takes time." State Protection
Office staff are less optimistic. "New runners are always being sought,"
said Corporal X., whose name is being kept confidential.

"We don't know much about gangs coming from Turkey," X admitted. Turkish
smugglers specialize in family groups. The bosses never leave Turkey, and
their interests are looked after by "residents"-citizens from a given
country. Residents operate under the cover of a legal business, such as a
restaurant. X said that Poles sometimes manage to corrupt civil servants,
including police officers. Gangs operating on the "Turkish route" have
worked out dozens of ways to avoid interception. "For example, they will
betray another runner to divert the attention of customs officers and the
Border Guards," said X.

Drug enforcement officers in Szczecin knew what they were looking for when
they broke into 43-year-old D. E.'s apartment (initials changed at the
police's request) on Jan. 26. They found a hatch in the floor under a
carpet, with steps leading to an underground corridor where they found 500
portions of cocaine packed for sale. The drugs had a street value of
zl.25,000.

"We have arrested our first cocaine wholesaler," said Captain Pawe3
Biedziak, press spokesman for the Szczecin Province Police Headquarters.
The arrest is important for the police. "Cocaine means connections with the
top gangsters," said Biedziak. "The man we arrested had links with the gang
in Pruszków [Poland's best-known mafia]. Unfortunately, he remains silent
whenever we question him."

Poland is a new market for cocaine-before it was only a stopover on the
route leading to the United States and Western Europe. The cocaine had
reached Poland from Latin America. Nine days before D. E. was arrested,
customs officers at Warsaw's Okêcie Airport found more than 2 kg of the
drug hidden in the covers of children's books. The parcel had come from
Brazil via Miami and Frankfurt. Last December, Okêcie customs officers
detained a runner who had brought 1.7 kg of cocaine into the country in
batteries for children's toys.

Until now, Poland's drug addicts have been unable to afford cocaine,
because the smallest portion costs at least zl.50. "Rich criminals buy it,"
said Biedziak.

A Mushrooming Trend

Narcotics have been in Poland at least since the early 1970s. Until 1989,
the only hard drug available was Polish heroin (commonly known as kompot) -
a substance produced at home from poppy straw.

The drug boom started in the 1990s; it was then that the police discovered
the first amphetamine lab, in Tuszyn near £ód*. A Cracow Jagiellonian
University worker had designed the drug production method for the criminals.

In a short time, Poland became one of the world's biggest amphetamine
producers. According to the State Protection Office and the police, Poland
has a 10-percent share of the global amphetamine market. Over the past two
years, more than 80 amphetamine labs have been closed. Some of them were
capable of producing up to 30 kg of the drug per month.

A single dose of amphetamine, 0.1 g, costs zl.10 ($2.80) on the street.
Polish addicts pay zl.20 ($5.60) for 1 gram of hashish and zl.5 for a cubic
centimeter of poppy "heroin."

The Health Ministry estimates there are about 20,000 drug addicts in
Poland; the government Narcotics Bureau claims that at least 400,000 Poles
use illegal drugs regularly. An opinion poll conducted by the OBOP center
last year indicated that one in 10 high-school students has tried an
illegal substance at least once.