Roberto Pannunzi

Roberto Pannunzi (born Rome, March 4, 1948), also known as Bébé (Baby), is an Italian criminal linked to the 'Ndrangheta, a Mafia-type organisation in Calabria. He is one of the top cocaine brokers for the Sicilian Mafia and the 'Ndrangheta with the Colombian cocaine cartels. He has been described as "Europe's most wanted drugs trafficker", and the "biggest cocaine trafficker in the world", the equivalent of Pablo Escobar, the head of the Colombian Medellín Cartel. According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the drug trafficking activities of Pannunzi have been documented for over 30 years.

Pannunzi was born in Rome on March 4, 1948. His father came from Rome but his mother from Calabria, kindred with the Macrì 'Ndrangheta clan from Siderno in Calabria. He is a former employee of Alitalia. As a boy, he moved to Canada with his family. In Toronto he became a pupil of Antonio Macrì, the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta boss from Siderno.

While in Toronto he met Salvatore Miceli, a Sicilan mafioso. The became close friends and Pannunzi became the godfather of Miceli's first born. The relation between the Calabrian and the Sicilian mafioso also was very useful for drug trafficking because of their connection in both criminal organisations.

Back in Rome, he ran an upmarket fashion boutique "Il Papavero" ("The Poppy") as a cover in the 1980s when he was making his way in the heroin business. In the late 1970s and 1980s he was involved in heroin trafficking with the Sicilian Mafiosi Gaetano Badalamenti and Gerlando Alberti, organizing shipments from Turkey through Italy to the United States. He put them in contact with Corsican gangsters from Marseille and convinced the chemist André Bousquet an old hand from the French Connection days, to set up a heroin-refining lab on Sicily. He also traded heroin to the U.S. on behalf of the Mafia bosses from Palermo Stefano Bontade and Salvatore Inzerillo.

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Wikipedia