Between May and July of 2019, Mr. Gogic conspired with others to traffic cocaine sourced in Colombia and transported through U.S. ports, for the ultimate goal of distribution in Europe, prosecutors said. At night, cocaine was ferried by speedboat to commercial cargo ships, hoisted aboard using a crane and loaded onto the vessels. The illicit deliveries were then concealed in containers. Altogether, prosecutors said, the process was a “complex operation” of logistics that required access to many details, including each ship’s crew, route, real-time positioning and awareness of the “legitimate cargo” in the containers.
In Europe, the international drug conspiracy relied on another set of port workers to “clandestinely access and remove the cocaine from the shipping containers,” prosecutors said, adding that “significant amounts of cocaine” were seized at ports in Panama, Peru and the Netherlands, as well as in other countries.
Ivan J. Arvelo, a special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in New York, said that Mr. Gogic’s arrest sent “a message to narco-traffickers worldwide that they are not free to hijack international maritime commerce with impunity.”
Mr. Gogic will be arraigned in the Eastern District of New York at a later date, prosecutors said. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and up to life in prison.
Several others involved in the June 2019 bust in Philadelphia have already been arrested and sentenced. Seven crew members of the shipping vessel MSC Gayane pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine, prosecutors said. At least three of these individuals were sentenced last year to more than five years in prison.
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