The Underworld Podcast

Sweden: ABBA, IKEA, third-wave coffee. A wealthy paradise? For some. For others, the Scandinavian state has become a homicide hotspot, with gun crime and grenade attacks on the rise. We tell the tales of its early Mafia kingpins - from bikers to the feared "Yugo Mafia", Arkan, Jokso and a spate of high-octane, helicopter bank heists. But when the Yugoslavs lost their grip on Sweden, they gave way to a new, chaotic and altogether more violent brand of gangsterism, that has enveloped low-income hoods in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö in shocking levels of violence - some of it played out in the music videos of rappers whose producers sit behind bars for murder. How did a rich, stable nation become the home of daylight drive-bys and revenge bombings? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the last two decades, the Taliban have moved from simply taxing Afghanistan's opium farmers to controlling every link in the chain of the world's biggest heroin supply. In Afghanistan's Opium Nation, we took you through the history of Afghanistan's opium and heroin industry up until the American invasion in 2001. In this episode, we recap the last 20 years of failed efforts to curtail the country's drug trade, detailing how US allies ramped up their growing and trafficking efforts just as the Taliban were doing the same. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ulrike Meinhof is dead and the remaining founders of the Red Army Faction, aka the Baader Meinhof Gang, are behind bars in Stuttgart. Is this the end for Germany's most notorious hard-left terrorists? Those who pull the levers of power certainly hope so. But 250 miles north in Cologne, a second generation is gearing up for their most audacious kidnapping plot yet. And on a runway in Mallorca, some of the RAF's foreign comrades are about to spark an international incident that has the world hooked - and engages some of the gnarliest SWAT cops around. Featuring bombings, murders, bank robberies, a golden age of hijackings and the gunning down of the guy tasked with reviving East Germany's post-Cold War economy - part two of our Baader Meinhof double-header is a breathless account of the gang's spiraling out of control, and existence to a shockingly late date. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For decades, starting a few years even before the Taliban took power the first time around, Afghanistan has dominated the world’s opium and heroin market, in some years producing up to 90% of the global supply. It’s also provided hundreds of millions of all dollars for all sorts of less than desirable entities. Warlords, Druglords, insurgents, rebels, US allies, US enemies and yes, the Taliban. There’s a couple of wild characters who pretty much have been each one of those things at one point or another in their careers. Then there’s the Pakistani and Iranian and Tajik smuggler networks that help get it across borders, the various criminal syndicates in Turkey, the Balkan, Russian, Kurdish and Central Asian traffickers who help get it across more borders all the way to the street crews in London, Scandinavia and everywhere else. All have fed off of the opium poppy planted in Afghanistan. So have the millions of heroin addicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran...and all over Europe, Central Asia, Africa and Russia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Baader Meinhof Gang, or Red Army Faction, came about as post-war Germany sought to rebuild from the death and destruction of the Nazi era. As the Cold War gripped the world and self-declared revolutionary groups rose up, the gang's reign of violence across Germany in the 1970's brought international infamy. Bank Robberies, prison breaks, and the Shah of Iran, what else do you need in a story? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Dominican Republic has long been a transshipment for cocaine heading to the United States and Europe. In recent years Dominican traffickers have started playing major roles in the supply chain. Corruption has flourished as local 'capos' have grown more powerful. All of this came to head when iconic and world famous baseball player David Ortiz was gunned down in a crowded bar in the summer of 2019. A week after the shooting, Sport Illustrated sent us down there to figure out what happened, opening up a door of cocaine, corruption, and the island's most powerful drug lord, Cesar The Abuser. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On July 6, legendary Dutch crime reporter Peter de Vries was shot in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street. A week later he was dead - another casualty of the sprawling Marengo Trial that could snare the Netherland’s biggest druglord - and bring the decades-old Mocro Mafia down with him. We get to the heart of the shooting, the history of the hash trade, ports, planes and cocaine - and why even one of Holland’s top cops admits his country is Europe’s ‘narco-state’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Multiple billion dollar shipments of the drug known as Captagon have been seized in the last few years as the cheap amphetamine floods the Middle East. Alleged to have helped fund the Syrian Civil war, the tiny pills have been showing up in numerous massive shipments confiscated in Mediterranean port cities, often sent by shadowy, high level networks. The pills are all almost exclusively made in Syria, and they're very likely the Assad regime's most valuable export. But what, exactly, is Captagon, who is doing it, and where did it come from? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a bizarre group of international gangsters shook on a massive meth deal with a DEA agent in Bangkok, Thailand eight years ago, it kicked off a manhunt ensnaring Hong Kong Triads, Outlaws bikers and an ex-US Army sniper’s band of contract killers. But the bust also shone a light on the shady drug network of North Korea, part of a crime machine fuelling the world’s maddest dictatorship. This is the story of how a war-torn Hermit Kingdom became a narco-trafficking, cash-counterfeiting, pimping Mafia state. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jose Miguel Battle's Cuban Mafia known as The Corporation ran a billion dollar numbers racket with brutal enforcers for three decades, growing so powerful that they went to war with the Luccheses, firebombing each other's spots all over New York City. This episode has got failed assassination plots, CIA Training, Fidel Castro, Harlem arson wars, cockfighting, billion dollar numbers rackets, ruthless hitmen with dozens of bodies, broad day shootouts in Central Park, Peruvian casinos and Miami cocaine trafficking, what more could you want? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices