One of Italy’s most wanted criminals, a number one drug dealer suspected of buying two stolen Van Gogh paintings on the black market, Dubai.
The Italian National Police and the Financial Crime Police said in a joint statement on Thursday that Raffaele Imperiale, the leader of an organized crime group in Camora in Naples, was arrested on August 4.
Imperiale, 46, is being held in the United Arab Emirates, while the Italian Ministry of Justice is completing the extradition process.
According to the Italian Ministry of the Interior, since January 2016, Italy has been seeking international drug trafficking activities as part of organized crime. He is considered one of the most dangerous and most wanted fugitives in Italy.
“He was able to build a strong international drug trafficking network, especially cocaine,” the police said. According to Italian investigators, Imperiale began as an “international broker” in the drug trade in the early 2000s, and his relationship with the powerful Camora clan has survived various discords between the Naples mob.
In 2016, two Van Gogh works stolen from the Amsterdam Museum in 2002 were Found hidden in the farmhouse Property owned by Imperiale in Castellamare di Stabia, a town in the Naples region where he was born.
“The illegally accumulated wealth allowed him to buy two unquantifiable Van Gogh paintings on the black market,” the police said. They mentioned the seascape in Scheveningen in 1882 and the work from 1884 to 1885, when the congregation left the Reformed Church in Nunnen. The painting was stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Italian police found these paintings wrapped in cotton cloth, stuffed into a box, hidden behind the bathroom wall. The artworks were found to be part of the confiscated property from Imperiale and another famous Camorra drug lord.
The police pointed out that Imperiale was interviewed by the Naples daily newspaper Il Mattino earlier this year. He denied any connection with the theft of these paintings and claimed that he purchased these works because he is an avid art lover.
“I bought it directly from thieves because the price is very attractive. But most importantly, because I love art,” Imperiale told the newspaper. He unabashedly lived in Dubai for a few years.
According to the Italian daily La Repubblica, Imperiale is part of the Amato-Pagana family and left Italy in the 1990s to run a coffee shop in Amsterdam and began to form alliances with Dutch traffickers.
The newspaper said that after initially engaging in the ecstasy trade, he set his sights on the more profitable cocaine trade. With the help of South American drug dealers, he transported tons of drugs to the Netherlands to the European market, while operating restaurants and investment companies. .
