Raffaele Imperiale, one of the most important drug dealers in Europe, was arrested in Dubai.

The Naples Public Prosecutor's Office confirmed a corresponding report by the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf on Thursday.

The arrest of Imperiales, who has been on the list of the six most dangerous criminals in Italy, has been carried out by the security forces in Dubai since August 4th.

David Klaubert

Editor in the section “Germany and the World”.

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In 2016, the Italian authorities had already put Imperiale out to be searched. As a cocaine trafficker for the Camorra, he had been sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment, which was reduced to eight years in higher courts. Since then, the Italian investigators suspected imperials in Dubai. So far, however, they had tried in vain to extradite the authorities of the United Arab Emirates.

Imperiale, born in 1974, had already taken over a coffee shop in Amsterdam in the mid-1990s. He got into the international cocaine trade and supplied the Camorra clan Amato-Pagano in Naples, which at that time was stuck in a bloody war for supremacy in the Scampia district. Imperiale made international headlines in 2016 when the police discovered Vincent van Gogh's “Beach near Scheveningen” and the “Parish in front of the Reformed Church in Nuenen” in his house in Castellammare di Stabia, both of which were removed from the Van Gogh Museum in 2002 Amsterdam had been stolen.

From Dubai, Imperiale apparently worked closely with other European drug lords.

According to documents from Dutch preliminary investigations, he was in contact with the network of Ridouan Taghi, at that time the most wanted criminal in the Netherlands.

According to the Dutch public prosecutor's office, decrypted messages from crypto cell phones show that Imperiale and Taghi's network not only organized joint cocaine deliveries to Europe, but also participated in the planning of murders.

Taghi was arrested in Dubai at the end of 2019 and extradited to the Netherlands.

Since March he has been on trial for six murders, among other things.

He is still being investigated in a number of other cases.

And even after the murder of the journalist Peter R. de Vries in early July, there are traces in Taghi's environment.