COCAINE BOATS

HOW BALKAN GANGS INFILTRATED THE WORLD'S BIGGEST SHIPPING COMPANY AND CREATED A GLOBAL TRAFFICKING NETWORK

- LAUREN ETTER AND MICHAEL RILEY

In the summer of 2019, Claudio Bozzo, chief operating officer of MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co., flew 4,000 miles from Geneva to Washington, DC, for a meeting with US Customs and Border Protection. He’d been sent by MSC’s owner, a secretive 82-year-old billionaire named Gianluigi Aponte, to contain a crisis.

A few months earlier, more than 100 agents had boarded one of MSC’s ships, the Gayane, as it slid into the Port of Philadelphia for what was supposed to be a quick stop on its way to Rotterdam. Deep below deck, hidden in containers packed with wine and nuts, the agents discovered nearly 20 tons of cocaine, worth $1 billion. The ensuing investigation showed that more than a third of the crew—all MSC employees—had helped transfer vast amounts of cocaine from speedboats at night while the ship powered through the open ocean off South America. It was the largest maritime drug bust in American history.

The crime was so big and brazen that authorities made the exceptional decision to seize not just the cocaine but also the Gayane itself, a 1,000-foot-long ship worth more than $100 million. During Bozzo’s meeting with the CBP in the limestone Ronald Reagan Building, he apologized for the ordeal and said the crew’s actions had come as a surprise, according to a person familiar with the events. He extolled MSC’s growth from humble beginnings into the world’s largest shipping company and impressed upon the officials how seriously the Aponte family takes the responsibility of running a fleet that accounts for nearly 20% of all seaborne container trade.