The Underworld Podcast

Does any country deserve the title of narco-state more than tiny Guinea-Bissau? The West African nation has become the beating heart of the global cocaine trade, with political leaders serving as little more than pawns in a trade that transformed its cashew coast into a gangster’s paradise. And it doesn’t even have any proper prisons! We explore street fights, assassinations, DEA plots, Colombian conspiracies - and a round-bellied former military chief that totally _isn’t_ a druglord, pinky promise. A truly incredible melting pot of crime on the streets of whose tumbledown capital city cocaine bricks, not banknotes, have become the principle currency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A President assassinated. Amish missionaries from Ohio held for million dollar ransoms (per person!). A former cop named Barbecue turned vicious gang leader in the slums claiming to be a revolutionary with aspirations of political power. And a country held hostage by warring street gangs who now control more than half of the capital city and the flow of essential goods. This is the story of how Haiti's gangs were nurtured by the political and business elite, only to grow so powerful that they turned on their former patrons and now control the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the smog-filled streets of industrial Birmingham, groups of ‘Peaky Blinders’ earned a reputation as Britain’s most feared gang, terrorizing anybody who stepped in their paths with bats, blades and whatever else they could get their hands on. They ruled the UK’s second city until the turn of the century. Led by Anglo-Irish prizefighter Billy Kimber, what followed them was even more fearsome. The ‘Brummagems’ forged alliances with London crews, robbed the rich and ran Britain’s ultra-lucrative horse racing courses. They couldn’t hold the throne for long. Italian Londoners and a long-suffering Jewish bookmaker helped launch the ‘Racecourse Wars’ of the 1920s, pitting brutalized World War I veterans against each other in mob clashes the likes of which the country had never before seen. Decades later Kimber and his Birmingham boys would be immortalized in the hit TV show Peaky Blinders. But the truth may just be stranger than the fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Out there in the jungle, something evil and powerful grows. This is the story of Dairo Antonio Usaga, better known as Otoniel, Colombia’s most wanted drug trafficker for a decade. A communist guerrilla turned right wing death squad leader turned cartel boss, he was known for his massacres and predilection for underage girls. He was also known to be particularly brutal, in a way that shocked even other narcos, and he had been hunted by the largest search operation in Colombia’s history for 6 years when he was finally caught 2 weeks ago, deep in the jungles of northwestern Colombia. Tracing his rise and fall with special guest Toby Muse, this is the story of the next evolution of cartel leaders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the last 5 years, murders in what's known as Israel's Arab sector have increased 50%, setting new records every year as criminal clans and organized crime have turned cities and towns into fiefdoms run by powerful gangsters who operate with impunity, where guns do most of the talking and Israel’s police are stuck trying to take back territory they abandoned. The clans have moved from extortion and drug smuggling to completely taking over municipal governments where they use shell companies to give themselves hugely profitable government contracts. Local politicians who get in the way have been killed, their families threatened, and attacks have gotten so brazen that even rivals traveling under police escort have been murdered. This week we are joined again by Ben Hartman, a former crime reporter in Israel who last guested on our "Car Bomb Wars of the Israeli Mafia" episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Khun Sa was a mercenary, a rebel, a warlord and a freedom fighting drugmaker who all-but created the modern heroin industry in the wake of the Vietnam War’s smack epidemic. At one point, the Shan hero, his fiefdom buried deep in the Burmese brush, supplied three quarters of all the gear in America. No wonder Washington called him the ‘Prince of Death.’ But Khun Sa’s path was actually paved by a princess, who eschewed a life of Kokang royalty to become a gun-toting shaven-headed, trans opium kingpin. Few dared to mess with Miss Hairy Legs, who dated Hollywood stars and went everywhere with a cigarette-carrying lackey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Nicky Louie stalked the streets in the 1970's, he was the first gangster to scare Chinatown in decades. At only 22-years-old, he led his gang of gun-toting teen hitmen known as the Ghost Shadows in countless shootouts against the Flying Dragons. Both street gangs were linked up with the established and secretive community groups known as Tongs that had been operating and controlling Chinatown since the 1890's. Together, the gangs and tongs ran the protection and gambling rackets, getting a piece of every single business in the neighborhood. But when the tongs linked up with Hong Kong Triads, who themselves had linked up with Burmese opium growers churning out the 95% pure heroin known as China White, things really got interesting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Something a little different this week: No regular episode but we've decided to put the patreon bonus episode up for free. Max Daly, based in London, is the Global Drugs Editor for VICE. The Orwell Prize-winning investigative journalist has freelanced for The Guardian, BBC, Independent and other publications, and his 2013 book _Narcomania_ explored Britain’s booming drug scene. Sean spoke to Max about London’s drug and knife crime explosion, county lines—and how the government has failed to act—Albanian takeovers and something called ‘cuckooing.’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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