Skip to content
relates to How a Cocaine-Smuggling Cartel Infiltrated the World’s Biggest Shipping Company
Illustration: Viktor Hachmang for Bloomberg Businessweek
Businessweek
The Big Take

How a Cocaine-Smuggling Cartel Infiltrated the World’s Biggest Shipping Company

As MSC grew into a dominant force in global trade, it also became a prime drug-trafficking conduit for Balkan gangs.

This is the first story in a three-part series about global shipping and the surge in drug trafficking.  Read the second installment and third story in the series.

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.

Share