My name is Fausto “Tato” Cattaneo,
and I used to infiltrate drug cartels.
All young people have dreams.
My dream was to become a pilot.
My parents ran a nice restaurant in Graubünden for 50 years.
And then something terrible happened,
the death of my sister at a very young age
which had a profound impact on the whole family.
I became interested in police work.
I got a degree in forensic sciences at the University of Lausanne,
and eventually I came to lead, within the judicial police,
a department that specialized in two things
infiltrating and combatting organized crime.
If you're waging war against any enemy, you must understand out how that enemy is organized.
The same as in sports!
So it can be done, but it requires undercover work.
Once the operation is over, you should be in a position to show very clearly and precisely
how a criminal organization operates.
This is the most important result of any undercover operation.
Like international business, organized crime has representatives around the world.
As was the case in the “Pizza Connection”.
I, a Sicillian crime boss, send to Switzerland a guy who has to open a legit business. Perfectly legal!
Such as a restaurant for example,
financed by Sicilian mafia money. But…
this restaurant will serve as a reference point for the Sicilian Mafia in Switzerland,
and if I’m the guy operating that business then I have to do everything the boss says
If for some reason I don’t do as I’m told,
my entire family back in Sicily will be killed.
That’s how organized crime works
not just in Italy, but around the world.
You can make mountains of money, millions…
We’re talking about laundering money of criminal origin
coming either from a hold-up, or the sale of weapons and drugs.
There are many ways of doing this, countless ways
but the easiest way is through real estate.
Another system is the creation of several offshore businesses,
or creating a huge number of connected companies, the “Russian Doll” method
making it impossible for investigators to ever find out who the real owners are.
The first and hardest step is gaining the trust
and let me tell you, as an expert in the matter,
gaining the trust of a high-ranking operator in the criminal underworld is not easy.
It’s a game where psychology plays a very important role.
A cop has to know the territory in which he is operating,
so let me tell you about the Locarno region.
There’s this little town named Ascona
people used to call “Little Las Vegas”.
In a region of only about 30’000 inhabitants, Ascona had over 30 night-clubs.
And you could encounter all sorts there: wealthy people packed with money,
criminals, minor delinquents, traffickers big and small…
I knew them all!
One evening in the early 80s, I saw some very interesting Bolivians there.
They happened to be the daughters of the King of Cocaine: Roberto Suarez Sr.
Back then, the Suarez Organization produced tons of cocaine paste
and their most important client was Pablo Escobar of the Colombian Medellin Cartel.
At the time, like most of South America, Bolivia was a dictatorship.
The King of Cocaine had one of his accomplices, Garcia Meza, elected president of the country,
and put together a private army composed of former Nazis and led by former SS colonel Klaus Barbie
who was the general of the Suarez group’s private army
known as the Fiancés of Death.
They were more powerful than the Bolivian army!
I met him
and I met his second-in-command, a young neo-Nazi named Joachim Fiebelkorn.
That guy had a restaurant at La Paz filled with Hitler memorabilia
The organization conscripted every single cocaine leaf producer in the country
and forced them to sell Suarez their harvest at a fixed price.
Those who didn’t…
Hundreds of people, farmers, were killed
because they would not sell to the organization.
Because you needed those leaves to then make cocaine paste.
And then Suarez needed a way to move huge amounts of money to a safe place.
Back then, the world was not as globalized as it is today
so moving the money to Switzerland was no easy task.
Suarez’s daughter had travelled to Spain
and in a nightclub in Madrid, she met these two Swiss guys
two insignificant delinquents...
But they happened to have a clever brother,
who worked in a Swiss insurance agency and did business with Swiss banks.
And that’s how they found a way of transferring all that dirty money to Switzerland.
Through friends in the DEA, we went to Miami and met Suarez’s son – Roberto Suarez Jr
who had been studying in California, where he had gotten an army pilot license.
So we arranged a meeting, through the DEA, for the purchase of 600kg of cocaine
as a first transaction to establish a relationship.
And in a safe, in Miami, we left I don’t remember how much money.
I think 4 or 5... maybe 6 million dollars.
And then, one day, we went by plane to Bolovia to coordinates the cartel had given us
and arrived at this clandestine landing strip near Cocha Bamba
Junior was there with his private plane, and the Fiancés of Death oversaw the whole operation
and at the end we said “see you in Miami”
He was supposed to come open the safe with the money
because we'd set up an account where you needed two keys to access the safe.
Unfortunately, he never showed up.
He'd signed a waiver for a friend of his to go in his place
and when that guy showed up, of course, the Americans arrested him on the spot.
In Bolivia, the Garcia Meza government was growing unstable
there was a mini-revolution, and everyone began to flee.
Fiebelkorn fled to Buenos Aires
and the Argentinians arrested him.
We went down there to talk to him
We gave him two options.
Either stay in an Argentinian prison for 30-40 years
or get out after a few days and work with us.
We interrogated him for a whole week and he told us these unbelievable things
which we verified and turned out to be true.
That his boss, Klaus Barbie, who was wanted for genocide by the French authorities
had come to Switzerland with a diplomatic passport under the name Klaus Altmann
been officially greeted by the Swiss government, red carpet and everything
and bought I don’t even remember how many Pilatus-Porter military aircraft
for hundreds of millions of dollars, along with other military equipment
all paid for with dirty money from sales of cocaine.
I spent 3 months in Miami when the trial took place
and I remember that when I arrived at the airport, a DEA colleague told me
“Tato, we’re going to have to be very careful because we’ve been told...
that the Suarez group have sent killers here to eliminate you.”
We went to a hotel, a Holiday Inn, and every week we would change rooms or floors.
My friend from the DEA gave me a gun, and told me
"If somebody enters your room without permission, kill them.”
And I said “what if it’s a hotel employee bringing me a whiskey or a coke?”
But he said "shoot anyone who comes in unannounced!"
When I asked what would happen next he said that would be their problem, not mine!
Imagine sleeping with a gun under your pillow for 3 months...
It was terrifying. It almost broke me psychologically.
After 3 months of trial, and despite the proof that Suarez had sold us 600kg of cocaine
Something he'd admitted to himself!
He insisted that he hadn't known that the drugs were meant to be sold on US territory
so the court found him not guilty.
You know what he did then?
In front of the packed courthouse...
3 times!
A few years later he died in shoot-out against the Bolivian Police.
Back in Switzerland, we arrested his whole family, except for Suarez Sr.
His wife was hiding checks for millions of dollars under her clothes
Barbie was arrested in Bolvia, extradited to Lyon, judged there, and died in a French prison.
In Switzerland, there was a parliamentary investigation
as well as a parliamentary military inquiry
It was a huge scandal!
The money for those 600kg of cocaine was laundered
through a financial company named FIMO, based in Chiasso.
They'd laundered tons of money linked to Italian corruption,
like dirty money linked to Silvio Berlusconi.
Judge Giovanni Falcone and I wrote a 14 page report
and faxed it to then Ticino DA Carla Del Ponte.
In 1993, she decided that it wasn’t enough to go on and dropped the FIMO investigation.
Later, in April 1994, just like that, she was appointed Attorney General for the entire country
and from that point on she used her power to cause me all kinds of legal troubles
She investigated me for a so-called “economic and political espionage”
and only once I was able to publish my book did her successor decide
that I was indeed completely innocent of the crimes Mrs Del Ponte had accused me of.
In Switzerland, my book caused a huge scandal.
I had begun an investigation in South America
in Colombia, Bolivia and Brazil
which was then a very important platform for Colombian cartels.
I was investigating a huge cocaine trafficking operation, with weapons smuggling on one side,
and large-scale money laundering on the other.
I knew that in Rio de Janeiro, certain jewelry stores
served as public relations or covers for criminal organizations.
These Businesses were legal and functional, but served as fronts for illegal activity,
drug trafficking on one hand, money laundering on the other.
That’s where I met my wife!
She helped me translate wiretapped phone conversations.
The organization planned on sending 5 tons of cocaine to Europe, through Italy.
Unfortunately, this huge investigation was completely thrown out the window.
Informers began sidelining me from the investigation
in order to engage in all sorts of illegal business of their own.
And what happened then?
Corrupt French and Brazilian cops sold hundreds of kilos of cocaine
cocaine that came not from the cartels, but from the police’s own seized stocks!
We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars here!
That criminal organization had at its disposal tens of offshore companies.
I documented all this, and denounced it to the Swiss state and magistrates
but because these criminal acts had been committed in part
with the help of members of the Swiss government
my accusations were discarded like trash.
In Switzerland, nobody discussed this publicly, as usual.
I worked a lot with attorney Dick Marty, a man of great courage and integrity.
Thanks to him we helped my wife escape from Brazil.
Friends hid her in the greatest slum in South America,
La Rocinha, in Rio de Janeiro.
We made this really complicated car journey to avoid being followed,
we stayed there a couple of days, in hiding,
then we travelled all the way to Foz do Iguacu,
the region of the 3 borders.
There, between Brazil and Paraguay, lies the Friendship Bridge,
which, at the end of every week, is packed with smugglers!
So we drifted off into that river of people,
passed the border without anyone checking us,
and across the border we took a bus.
From Rio de Janeiro we travelled about 3’000 kilometers by bus.
When we finally arrived at our hotel, a Hilton, we looked so disheveled
that the receptionist asked us whether we could really afford a room...
It's true!
We spent about 10 days in Asuncion
we changed hotels a couple of times
and finally we took a plane to Switzerland.
All of this drove me into such a deep depression
that I felt the only way out was to kill myself
and I used to think about that a lot.
When I contemplated suicide I felt… relieved.
If I’m still alive today, it’s because of my wife.
We finally won this legal battle after 15 years of work.
15 years!
In October 2015, the Federal Criminal Court ruled that everything in my book was 100% true.
Throughout my career, I had received awards from the FBI,
the DEA, Interpol, the Bundeskriminalamt...
But when I look back on my long struggle against organized crime
perhaps it helped raise awareness in some circles,
but not among politicians.
Today, the leading players are still the same!
Worldwide, organized crime generates about 2 to 2.5 Trillon dollars every year!
And let’s not forget the link terrorism has to organized crime
specifically when it comes to drugs.
Where there are drugs, you’ll find terrorist groups
selling either heroin or cocaine to buy weapons!
Organized crime continues to exist because of corruption,
and that's the greatest threat in the world, far more dangerous than terrorism.
Corruption is a colossal cancer!
I don't believe we’ll ever succeed in eliminating corruption.
As the French say: the mother of all the idiots is always pregnant.
I say that the mother of all corrupt people is also always pregnant,
because she’s the sister of the mother off all the idiots!
It's not funny if you think about it
But it's true!
In 2015, the Swiss Federal Court cleared Tato of all crimes and confirmed the facts related in his book
Tato passed away in February 2019
At the time he was investigating a money laundering network involving illegal arms sales by major European powers
"I'm fighting with all my strength, and will do so until my last breath!"
"Never stop, never give up, never surrender!" - Fausto Tato Cattaneo