Italian drug trafficker Raffaele Imperiale.
A very unusual defense strategy against the charges against him was chosen by the Italian drug trafficker Raffaele Imperiale, 49, nicknamed “Lello”. Hoping to mitigate his sentence, as well as cooperate with the investigation, he decided to voluntarily transfer his criminally acquired assets to the state.
The gangster, stuck to the wall, declared, no less, that he was willing to give Italy the artificial island of “Taiwan” off the coast of Dubai. An exotic property in the archipelago of the New World Community, acquired in 2017 for 12 million euros, is today valued at no less than 60 million euros, writes the newspaper Il Giornale.
Previously, the crime boss did not resist and gave away the access code to a crypto wallet with bitcoins worth 1.8 million euros. Furthermore, while he was still on the run, through his partner Mario Cerrone, he pointed out to the police a stash of two Van Gogh paintings stolen in 2002 from a museum in Amsterdam. Then, the first sentence in absentia (18 years in prison) was commuted to 8.
Raffaele’s hopes for a purchase may therefore ultimately prove to be entirely unfounded.
Imperiale, accused in his homeland of drug trafficking, had been hiding abroad since 2016 and in 2022 he was extradited to Italy from the United Arab Emirates. According to law enforcement officials, he and his henchmen imported more than seven tons of cocaine into Europe between 2017 and 2021. To do so, they used an untraceable money laundering system called Hawala, backed by a network of middlemen in Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
It must be said that Lello himself led such a discreet lifestyle that at the beginning the investigation only had one photograph of him, and it was a group photo with another member of the clan, Attilio Repetti, who managed his international investments.
THE NAIS IS OFFICIAL EDITOR ON NAIS NEWS