Sergio Roberto De Carvalho was arrested on Tuesday. † © rr
He was one of the most wanted drug lords in the world, but his nearly three-year run came to an end on Tuesday. Sergio Roberto De Carvalho (63), a corrupt police major who had 45 tons of cocaine smuggled into Europe every year, has been arrested in the Hungarian capital Budapest. The ‘Brazilian Escobar’ also had a strong foothold in the port of Antwerp through water purification company Kriva Rochem.
Major Sergio Roberto De Carvalho was on his way to an appointment in Budapest on Tuesday when he was suddenly apprehended by an arrest team. The 63-year-old Brazilian, a former member of the military police, was arrested with a view to extradition to his home country of Brazil. There, the man not only still has a fifteen-year prison sentence, but he is also the main suspect in a large-scale drug investigation, called Operation Enterprise. And not only in Brazil he still has to sit down, in Spain there is also a prison sentence.
Everything in the life of drug lord Sergio Roberto De Carvalho is big and extreme. For example, the Brazilian police hold him responsible for the export of 45 tons of cocaine a year to Europe. That coke entered Europe in containers, which were brought in via companies such as the Antwerp Kriva Rochem. The coke business generated so much money that Carvalho decided to take over an airline company in Portugal. The Brazilians seized about thirty private jets during the investigation. In an apartment in Portugal, the investigators found 12 million euros in cash that belonged to Carvalho’s organization.
Officially died of Covid-19
The major then settles in Spain under a false name and organizes his cocaine empire from southern Spain. The Spaniards expose him and sentence him to fifteen years. To escape the police and justice, he stages his own death. On paper, Sergio Roberto De Carvalho died of Covid-19, but in reality there was someone else in the coffin.
When Operation Enterprise and the Kriva file burst open, the Major is on the run again. Under the alias Paul Wouter, he flees to Ukraine with his Belgian bodyguard. And that’s where the trail ends. His name will reappear in 2021, after a Liège engineer in a private jet Brazil is caught with 1.3 tons of cocaine. The man, a terminal cancer patient, would receive half a million euros if he would bring the drugs to Belgium. The 60-year-old man from Liège died in Brazil.
(jvda)
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