The Underworld Podcast - The Story of Sweden's Gang Crime Chaos: From Yugoslav Kingpins to Bombings, Rifles and Roadblocks

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

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

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only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Ambition comes in all shapes and size. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition. First Citizens Bank. July this year in Gothenburg, Sweden's second city, and a bunch of guys are chilling at a barbershop in the city's industrial south. It's a relaxing, broad daylight 2pm.

Then, as if from nowhere, two men stride into the shop dressed in black. Their face is shielded by balaclava's and brandishing guns. One pushes the barber aside. He's coming straight for his customer, a 25-year-old sitting still in his chair beside the window. Stand back, the pair yells. And they open fire, emptying ten bullets into the man, most of which hit his head.

Dyes almost instantly, blood spattered everywhere, still sitting in the chair. It's a scene straight out of Manhattan. Albert Anastasia, Murder Inc. Hollywood Law. This is the latest in a slew of gangland violence that's gripped Gothenburg since May, when around 100 men held a massive street fight in a northern suburb, stunning locals in the police. A few days after that, an assassin shoots a man in the back of the head at point-blank range at a grocer's store. Then, at the end of June, a 17-year-old kid walks up to a 30-year-old policeman and shoots him dead in the rough neighbour.

of Bissop's Garden, one of the downtowns of the city's chaotic gang scene. It's the first time an active cop has been shot dead in Sweden in 14 years. It's public outrage. Swedish PM calls the murder a quote, attack on our open society. We will never back down in the struggle against organized crime. But it's not over. And just days after the officer slaying, two men walk into the barbershop in Fulanda. Yet another deprived area ravaged by gangs

were proliferated in the years following the demise of Balkan mobsters that dominated Swedish crime for decades. Their numbers are huge. They're bombing and grenade attacking citizens. And they're getting so young, the Swedish state didn't know what to do. Drugs, joblessness, a hostile environment, turf wars and guns from the full Yugoslavia. It's a miracle more bodies aren't dropping. This is Sweden, land of social welfare, Spotify, Abba, IKEA. It's a peaceful place, right?

One of the world's good stories, safe space. Not quite. In fact, Sweden's the only place in Europe where gun crime has gone up since the early 2000s, with bomb blasts, roadblocks and murders, an all too common feature of daily life in its three major cities. Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malma. and the barbershop bloodshed won't be its last. Welcome to the underworld podcast. So, hey guys, and welcome to another edition of the show that teaches you all about how to settle turf wars in public without involving those pesky cops.

I'm your host Sean Williams, and as always I'm joined by my podcast wife, Danny Gold, who's based in a place called New York City. I'm in the Fair Town of Berlin. This is a multicultural, multi-continental podcast. It's just two white journalists in our 30s, straight up heterosexual males talking about gangs. Getting kind of weird.

And when you put it like that, it's kind of depressing. But, uh, yeah. It's totally cool. It's totally cool. I mean, how's it going over there? I mean, right now we've got an election going on. I mean, as we're speaking, we've got an election going on. So it's the end of Angela Merkel.

Has anything exciting going on in the States? Yeah, I mean, take it easy, Dan, rather. There's no one, no one's here for that. I'm excited about this episode. I think a lot of people have reached out. to us and said they wanted us to talk about the, um, the gang situation in Sweden. But I, I think I like what you did here. You're kind of going back into the history too. So I think it's a, it's a pretty good episode for sure. Yeah. And if you listen to the Patreon episode we did recently with

Hugo Kaman, who described like an insane amount of gun violence, homicides, gang trouble in Sweden, which is like a world away of the image most people have of it, which is all happy, clapy, sing, song, rich people living in a little stable paradise. Yeah, I also, I interviewed a Bjorn Wegener a little while back who kind of broke down the entire history of organized crime in Sweden and, you know, he's super knowledgeable about all this stuff. So the Patreon, again, Patreon.com slash general world podcasts where we put up bonus episodes. You know, for $5, you can get show notes, scripts, source lists, everything like that for a little

bit more. But please support us if you can because that's where we're doing a lot of. interesting stuff if you want to get more. Yeah. And I mean, all this stuff about Sweden being this, you know, nice little happy country, it's pretty much true. I mean, Sweden is a really safe place to live. It's got just 1.08 homicides per 100,000 people, which puts it 184th worldwide. The UK is 175th, by the way. America's 94th, so getting Britain. I'm actually, I'm surprised America is only 94th and not like top 50, to be honest with you.

I want to double check, I want to double check those facts. But yeah, I mean, the Sweden thing is interesting too, right? Because, you know, it has become this political football for culture war stuff, you know, where it's either like the most dangerous place on earth or completely fine, depending on which side of the culture war you fall on, which neither one of those things is true. And also, we just, like, we don't do that. We're not going to get involved with that. We'll tell some good stories about it.

Yeah. I mean, didn't Trump say that like Sweden was on fire or something? That was like a big touch. I don't know, man. Like the right wing in the US really seized on Sweden for a while. And it just became like a stupid talking point football that we're going to ignore. Yeah, we're going to ignore that guys. But those stats like the 1.08 homicides, that's really only for certain kinds of Swedes.

And to explain why we're going to take it all the way back. back to the 1970s, as we love to do here, when Sweden and the whole of Scandinavia is really going through this industrial purple patch, and they just don't have enough people for the jobs. So what they do is they reach out across Europe, particularly in the socialist Yugoslav Republic, which is then run by a dictator called Yosep Broz Tito. And so under Tito's Yugoslavian brand of socialism, Yugoslavians, that's modern-day Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia, including, of course, Kosovo.

Their citizens live pretty well compared to their neighbours in, say, like, Albania or Bulgaria, Romania. And they actually have pretty decent freedom of movement, so they can head across Europe. And even the world, I mean, there's loads of people in South Africa from the former Yugoslavia. And they're looking for money to send home for family and country. And that includes Sweden. And there's a great report, by the way, last year, Global Initiative by Waterkemp, that I've used a bunch of this research, so shout out to Walter. But all of this Balkan migration comes with a pretty massive catch.

Yugoslavia is a hotbed of crime at the time. And as Misha Glenni says in McMafia, like one of the best books ever, these so-called guest worker communities, the gas arbiter we spoke about in our Dutch and German episodes, they quote, provided the milieu in which less, salubrious Yugoslav characters could take refuge and disappear from police if necessary. Yeah, and not only that, though, as we kind of discussed in the Pink Panther episode, and I think in Arkhan's episode as well, which was our first one, Tito had a habit of sending some of his most fearsome killers and criminals across Europe to murder dissidents,

do bank robberies, and just have a great chaotic lawless time. So that was like something that they actively did, the Yugoslav, I don't know if you call it secret service, their intelligent operatives, and whatever it was. Like, that was something that they engaged in. Well, it's funny you mentioned one of those guys. I mean, we're going to get to 1972 now. And violence is just kicking off everywhere in the world. The Black Liberation Army shoot dead two cops in New York City, the British Army massacres, 14 people in Derry on Bloody Sunday. Black September kills Israeli athletes in Munich. I mean, those are just insane times. And in the Balkans, it's the starting point in the career of a certain Mr. Cesar

Reiko Razzanatovich. Yep, that's right, folks. We're kicking this show off with our star of episode one, like 15 years ago or wherever we started this thing. That's the original Tiger King, Arcan. And like you said in that show, Danny, Arkhan makes his name going on a robbing spree like all over Europe with a bunch of his buddies,

turning over banks and more, shipping drugs and other stuff, just making dollar. And then they're Albanians at the same time. They're shifting hooky cigarettes and alcohol, Turks forging heroin and weapons routes across the continent. In fact, in 1974, Archon actually moves to Stockholm, where he carries out five bank robberies and 12 raids in total,

which the authorities actually do pin on him. But just like in Belgium, Germany and elsewhere, he gets away. And then, like we get into in your first episode, the War of the Balkans in the 1990s, it turns these thieves and pill pushes into paramilitaries, used by the government, just like you said, to knock off rival ethnic groups, and they commit all kinds of horrific abuses

before turning that money in power into an even more potent mob, which Swedes call, and I'm sorry, Sweden, I'm going to ruin your language here, the Yugomafian or Yugo Mafia? Now, I'm assuming, like, this is using the word mafia as a catch-off for organized crime groups, right? Like, is this a situation where,

like with the Russian mafia, where it's not exactly some hierarchical structure, just a bunch of criminals who sometimes online with each other, or is it like more significantly organized? It seems a bit of a mish-mash at first, but a couple of guys are going to sort of rise to the top. And then you kind of add to this situation,

this like really unique situation in the Balkans. You get these thumped, broken nations in the former Yugoslavia, and you pretty much just make him ready-baked gangs with lawlessness and easy trafficking routes at home and a network of established tooled up hoods ready to go all over rich European nations.

And from that point, you could branch off into the Albanian Ponzi scheme, which you mentioned in previous shows, but we really should do one on that alone. The Italian Mafia or the Pink Panthers, which is another one of your shows.

But let's head back up to the Scandies because it's just about to get nuts there. Yeah, I think the Arcon episode really dives into this a lot more if people want more depth than that. But also, you know, I think it's one of our first ones. So let's just say it's a little rough if you go back and listen.

It's not as smooth and polished as we are now. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're going to go back, listen to Danny's ones because mine are hellfire. But Sweden already has its homegrown gang problem at this time. And they're mostly homegrown guys, outlawed biker groups that pop up in the 70s and 80s. It actually takes the Hells Angels until 1990s. They found a chapter in Skorna, which is the region enveloping Malmur, Sweden's third large city, which is separated from the Danish capital, Copenhagen, from a bridge made famous by

Scandinavian detective show, Bridge. Yeah. Yeah, for some reason, you know, I know these guys are like vicious and sociopathic and they would definitely kill me very easily, but it's just kind of like the weird appropriated American culture happening there of these biker gangs. It just kind of strikes me as adorable, you know, it's like when European rappers use American slang. Although, again, you know, they're all very dangerous people.

I want no problems with them. It's just kind of weird. Yeah, again, like Abba and all kinds of nice stuff. I mean, I think I'm going to disabuse you with that pretty soon. These local bikers, I mean, these guys are no match for the War Tuffin Slavs. And by the mid-1990s, the Yuga Mafian is pretty powerful. And it controls many of the black market trade routes into Sweden. And the so-called gangster king of all of this, according to the Swedish cops.

This is a guy named Dragan Yoxovich, aka Yoxo. He's born in Titograd in in 1956, which is modern day Podgorica, Montenegro. And this guy is a beast.

He's six foot seven, two, six five pounds. It's got a face like a grizzled vampire, gold chains and arms like bouncy castles. Christ, I mean, he probably had to buy his tracksuits custom made,

you know? I've got a great photo that I put up on our Twitter this week, and he looks, he just looks comical. He's so huge. Anyway, this guy, yeah, he's scary, right? I don't want to be getting on his wrong side ever.

P.S. Patreon, 4 slash Underworld Podcasts. Guys, help me out with the Moldovans. I mean, we're making it worth your while with a load of bonus shows. And I can only do so much way-powder before I shit myself to death. So anyway, Yoxo's known as this terrifying streetfire back home. And he even gives infamous tough guy Lazovic a run for his money. Wait, who is? Lazovic. Like, you can't just be like, oh, yeah, infamous tough guy, Lazo Delovich and think anyone

has any idea what you're talking about. Can I not just say like infamous tough guy in Yugoslavia, Laszolovich and he would not know that he's absolutely nails. Okay. You got to clarify. All right. This guy is a bad, big bad criminal and he's known in the underworld back then as like the baddest guy ever. And apparently according to the law, according to law, he actually beats Yoxo in a fight. gives him such a run for his money that this guy's like, all right, yeah, cool, you got me. And he kind of like gets the word out. This guy is pretty nails. But one time, Yoxo, as he was known, he actually goes a bit too far and he beats up a Yugoslav

army soldier back home. And before he's arrested, he flees to Sweden and quickly falls in with the local mobster crowd, including Arkhan. Folks there called him the quote, great Yoxo, because, yeah, I mean, he's massive. and he's like a right-hand man for Arkham when he's tearing about the country, robbing banks and all sorts. And now we like to look at the bigger picture

for these shows, like show that these things are systemic, tons of politics behind the ethnic crime groups, but Arcane and Yoxo, they're just the absolute worst migrants you could ever have. Just a pair of total shitheads. That's my sizzling hot take on that.

And while Arkand goes on the lamb across the continent, Yoxo manages to build an empire in Sweden. He evades the cops, and he makes tons of money. He actually even appears in the music video for Sweden's Eurovision entry, and no, sadly it wasn't Abba, which really annoyed me in the research.

But of course, it was Lassa Holman-Monikernell with their classic, Eidetet Herr de de hairlik, which I think means, are you too late for love? I don't know. And I want to ask Swedish listeners reviewing my accent there,

and by that, I mean, don't review it. And, I mean, it didn't do as well as 1985's Brae Vibrationer. Or of course, 984's Diggy Lou, Diggy Lay, but, you know, it's a tune. And if you want to know, because I'm genuinely, like, I actually am a massive ABA fan. They won it with Waterloo back in 74. So there's your obligatory ABBA reference guides. Do you even get Eurovision in the States?

It's like the high mark of European culture. I have no idea what you've said for the past four and a half minutes. I do know Yaya Ding Dong. But I like the idea of this guy being in this video wearing like, like a shiny shirt and dancing to, like, awful European pop music. So I hope that's what happens. Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest. I put in the hard miles for you guys and I looked through this music video and I couldn't

really see if there was a six foot seven gym bunny like dancing about in the background. But I guess it's there. I mean, there's also even a documentary called Yoxo, but it's some 90s TV show. And it's all in Swedish. I've put it up there on the reading list in case anyone can understand it. Anyway, so there's an Interpol agent who chased Yoxo around for 12 years. He's called Kenneth Vilemon. Quote, it was almost impossible to gather evidence against him.

All the witnesses' tongues were tidying and not at the very mention of Yox's name. Everyone was afraid of the cruel meth as he used. Everyone was afraid of him, like the devil himself. I mean, was this guy really just shifting fags and booze? I mean, I know the alcohol situation in Sweden is pretty mad. You have to buy it from state supermarkets and it costs a fortune. Actually, I think my mate, shout out to Eric, he said, they all get on booze ferries to Finland or something.

That sounds super fun. Anyway, Yoxo, he only gets one stint in prison ever, and that's two months for carrying a wrap of Coke. Props to the policeman for having the stones to nick him, by the way. And he owned restaurants and a few racehorses, like good old-fashioned mafia money laundering holes. So wait, did they... clash with the biker gangs?

Was there some sort of battle over these territories? Or they just kind of moved in and took over? As far as I can understand, it's similar to the situation with the Italian mafia in Australia. So the bikies were kind of running town. And then these Yugoslav guys came along, just completely beat their asses down. And then they ended up doing errands, essentially,

and like running drugs and other stuff for the Yugoslars. Yeah. And it's not all underworld. stuff that Yoxo's into and like this is a good story. In 1993, Swedish princess Orika Bidogod who's a former horse riding world competitor. She's abducted from her parents villa outside Brussels. Shout to the team at Equalifestyle for this

our absolute belter of a lead. Quote, gagged, blindfolded and slightly sedated. This is how the Swedish rider Orrika Bidigard then just under 30 years of age was held for five days in our country. I like that. Anyway, so Alrika's just mining her own gold-plated business when Lars Nilsson, this handyman at the villa, he grabs her at gunpoint, rolls her up in a carpet, and gags and binds her up in a soundproof box around the size of a fridge. He also tries to date in there with paint thinner, which as every good builder will tell you,

just gives you an insane headache like hoppers. So good work on the DOA, Lars, not so much on the farmer. And as you can imagine, all of this is just sending huge shop. through Sweden. And who do the authorities turn to to help them get closer to the princess? That's right, it's everyone's favorite, nightmarish gym bunny, Yoxo.

Says Serbian newspaper career, quote, Yoxo also worked as a security girl for celebrities. When the Swedish princess was abducted, the security services turned to Yox to help them through their connections in the underground. And the happy ending of this affair, the release of the uninjured princess brought in great

popularity in the tabloids, which called him great Yoxo and Yoxo div. I mean, I'm sure that means something in Serbian or whatever, because calling someone a div in England isn't, but whatever. And by the way, Orika ends up marrying the Belgian gendarme who frees her. So you get the idea. Yoxo isn't just a gangster. He's a full-blown celebrity. I mean, this is like a really, it's like a bad Netflix movie, you know, like it should be its own episode. It's. We just police can't solve the kidnapping of the princess. So they turn to the one guy who can. It's like six foot eight gigantic Serbian gangs.

Like what is going on? Yeah, I mean, it's like actually the plot of a Mario computer game. It'd be like it's like one of those Hallmark Christmas movies except kind of dark, you know? I mean, I'd be up for making that. Again, any producers out there. Like, we can do that show. But Yorxo's days are number two, right? And in 1998, he's waiting in line to place a bet in style.

When he's shot twice in the body and twice in the back of the head by a 20-year-old Finn called Jan Raninen, who's later sentenced to life in prison. Jokso's dead age just 42. Merked by basically a teenage Finn, man. What a way to go. Yeah, not known for their gangsters, are they? Where is Daredevil? Am I? Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil born again.

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The murder crashes through the Yuga Mafian underworld, and it's alleged that Arkang cried at Yoxo's funeral, which is the only time he's fault to have cried. I mean, yeah, all right. Says the Serbian paper courier again, quote, after the murder of his friend in Stockholm, Raznatovich threatened the Swedish authorities that if he did not punish the perpetrators quickly,

he would take revenge by killing Swedish soldiers in SFOR. That's the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Arkan, man, he just operated differently, huh? I still struggle to, like, level the pictures of Arcan with the man of Arcan. Like, he looks like such a little baby-faced, nice guy. but he really was not. No.

So this shooting at this betting store by basically a child Finn kicks off a gang war. And just two months later, two dark-clad men walk into the Brother Tuck bar in Stockholm. And they shoot dead of 36-year-old Yugoslavian, Dragan Kovach, who supposedly hired Ranninan with automatic weapons. Arkand's thought to be behind that killing too. Wait, so was this an internal gang war between, various like ulyoslav factions yeah yeah pretty much it seems like someone just wanted to top the king they did and arcand is just like uh-uh no way and so he starts causing mayhem as only he can really

do and really there's just so much information on the yugo mafian i mean most of it in the swedish press and i've basically disappeared down a balkan gangster hole doing research on this one There's a pretty grim episode back in 1983, for example, when a member of the mafia working on behalf of the government, that's the government in Yugoslavia, cornered Croat dissident businessman Stepan Dürich in a town just outside Munich, and he shot him with six bullets in the back and arms

and then a blow from an axe. That's pretty gross. And that was a guy called Ratko Dockich, who owned a Stockholm boxing gym. I mean, this stuff is all so tied up with the Yugoslavian secret. service, the wars, total mess. Anyway, back to Yoxo's death.

And it leaves a massive hole in the hierarchy of the Yuga of the Mafian. And who winds up fitting it? It's this little known guy by the name of Milan Sevo. Remember that name, guys, because our boy Milan's going to get involved in one of the maddest parts of this episode before long. This all kind of reminds me of just the Pusher trilogy, you know? But I think that's Denmark, right? Is it?

I don't even know that. Oh, it's great. You should watch those movies, man. They're incredible. Cool. No one on the list. And then... They're all about...

It's about Balkan mobsters in Scandinavia, but I'm pretty sure it's Denmark. Yeah, I mean, there's a huge crossover with Copenhagen and Malmo. We're going to get into a bit later on as well. Throughout the early 2000s, armed robbery has become a big deal in Sweden. In 2002, a gang led by a famous rapper named Leo Carmona,

also known as Chinese for his Asian looks, carry out of record-breaking multi-million-dollar high-est, of a plane from London, which lands at Stockholm's Orlando airport carrying 15 sacks of cash. Which stuns authorities, granted, but the crime takes an even darker turn the following year when one of the men involved is murdered in the Finnish capital Helsinki. Three guys are convicted of the slaying, and Carmona gets a life sentence for ordering it. How are you going to let a plane heist happen after Goodfellas comes out? I just, I don't get it.

Honestly, this airport is just a clown show all the way around. And like, this is far from the final connection between rap and gangland killings that we're going to get from this episode. But back to those robberies. In 2006, robbers armed with automatic weapons and explosives, they raid a security van in Orlando near the airport again. And the same year, Gothenburg's airport is shuttered after masked men rammer gate and hold up luggage handlers unloading Forex, and they get around a million dollars. And then, in 2008, a group of men carries out an even more daring robbery in Gothenburg, dropping spikes on the street to stop police cars, burning cars to make the city into a flaming maze,

and just leaving suspect bombs in the city center. Man, they are just all over the place, man. Craziness. Loving it. I mean, what is going on with these security? But before we get to the biggest heist of them all in 2009, I actually want to take you first to the city of Uppsala, near Stockholm. for a completely bat-shit story that while a bit off our main storyline,

it's really, really worth telling. So, Danny, have you ever heard of the Gizmodo? I have not. Okay, were you about to? This thing was a 2005 handheld gaming device. It was apparently going to take on the PSP, be a new Game Boy, only with a PDA, GPS and camera attached. So, yeah, super cool.

and this thing was made by a British company named Tiger Telemetrics. And to be honest, if you're hearing the phrase British Game Boy, you should already be on the lookout for trouble. A bunch of stars even promote the Gizmonde, though, and it looks like it might actually go somewhere. But then, in 2006, shock horror, critics pan the thing, Tiger files for bankruptcy over 300 million bucks of debt, oops. And also one of its execs,

the smooth-looking 44-year-old suite, called Stefan Erickson, he seems to have some less than boardroom ties. In fact, it's a little bit more than that. So back in 1981, Erickson then an auto repairman in the Swedish city of Uppsala, he gets sent down for robbery. And then in the 90s, he heads up a gang, locals called the Upsala Mafia. I just thought of Upsups upside your head then. Committing extortion, drugs, offenses, and then he goes in and out of jail,

but he's far from done. By 2006, Erickson is looking for another payday, and then he invests in Tiger. Says website The Local, quote, one of the first homegrown criminal networks to use mafia techniques, such as threats and violence as a business concept, was the Uppsala Mafia.

Having started out by selling steroids at the gym, the gang eventually achieved worldwide notoriety after luring international companies into investing in Gizmondo, a company that, built on the back of a handheld gaming console that barely reached the market. What is

going on in Sweden, man? It's just the one Netflix series after another over there. Yeah, I was telling you earlier, like, this is so many stories within stories, it's insane. Just weeks after the company files for bankruptcy, Erickson wraps his $2 million Ferrari Enzo around

a Malibu Power Pole at almost 200 miles per hour. And he splits the car clean in half. But amazing, he gets left with nothing but a split lip. And there's a brilliant wire piece from back then by Randall Sullivan, but basically Erickson's been drinking, and when someone asks him how he is,

he says he's an anti-terror cop and some minders whisk him away. Quote, I would rank it as probably the most incredible exotic car crash in history, says Greg Carlson, I know, what great quote, who runs rectexotics.com. And I mean, I know I've banged on about how the boring the internet is, now, but wreckedexotics.com, it's still there, and it's good. Oh, man. What an amazing name for a website and just a topic in general. I love everything about it. I love. If you want the absolute definition of Shardin-Froidur, that website is there for you. Anyway, guys, read the Wired

Story for a full account of all this insanity, which goes through black market cars, fake companies, the lot. Erickson has found out he's imported millions of dollars worth of illegally and he's done a load of other weird financial shit but he basically manages to get released from prison in 2008 but like all good crooks he's not done he goes down for another 18 months when he gets deported to sweden and he later gets hooked on a bunch of drug offenses i mean those swedes getting into the country and causing crimes trump should have banned them it's also like he did all these wild insane crimes and then he served 16 months just northern europe man you know Yeah, I mean, that is exactly what we're about to get into towards the tail end of this show as well.

But anyway, that is the Upsala Mafia. Now, back to the robberies. And I hope that didn't jolt you out the story, but I just thought that was such a cool story. It was worth telling. So you think the cops or at the very least Swedish airport security, they would be getting wise to all this stuff, the robberies. It being such an epidemic. And it's carried out mostly by these foreign-born gangsters,

many of whom are coming straight out of the Yuga Mafia scene. Well, yeah, and no. So we're getting to September 2nd, 2009. And now I'm going to borrow heavily from a brilliant feature that friend of the show Evan Ratliff wrote about this. Massive recommend, love reading Evan's stuff. And we've interviewed him for a bonus show too on the Patreon, guys. So he begins his tale on this September day.

It starts in a Stockholm suburb, and three men are meeting up to discuss something. Only, they're not alone. The Swedish police have plainclothes officers snooping behind them. One they know is a guy called the quote, Tall One. It's actually another of the three that pricks the cop's ears up the most. And that's a first-generation Montenegrin Swede called Gorin Bojavich.

Anyway, forget my accent. Bojavich runs a cafe and furniture store on the edge of town. Nothing more than a few parking tickets on its record. But Serb cops have been chatting to their Swedish counterparts, about a friend of Gorans who's not all that innocent. Milan Sevo. Remember him? He's the leader of the Yuga Mafian who took over after Yoxo's murder.

Well, by this time, Sevo's just been captured on the Greek Macedonian border after nine months on the run. And folks at the Serbian embassy have tipped off their Swedish counterparts that Sebo and Bojavich have been chatting about, well, something. For me once, think the Swedes, shame on you. for me i don't know like dozens of times yeah that's definitely on them and this time they're not messing about they bugged the car and phone of bogevich and they're off to the races or so they think it seems that bojovitch has clocked them and he hops town for belgrade then montenegro then

highland where else a quick fact about sevo by the way he co-writes an autobiography called Swedish godfather, in which he says a friends of Sweden's king Carl Gustav reached out to obtain photos Sevo had of the king at a lesbian sex show in a Stockholm strip club in the 90s. Also, Sevo kind of looks a bit like Kid Rock, which I'm not sure if that's good or bad, just is. Anyway, the authorities are probably of a good idea what this strange team is going to plan. After all, Sweden, home to just 9 million of Europe's 700 million people at this point, accounts for 10% of the continent's robbery losses, suffering 224 assaults on cash distribution systems. And from all the surveillance they've gotten the guys, the police piece things together

to a G4S cash depot at Orlando Airport, Orlando Airport again. And they reckon the gang are going to strike on September 17, 2006. But they don't. It's actually going to kick off a week after that, when a team of guys grab a helicopter, helicopter and they fly it to the security depot a little after 5 a.m., searching for 150 million bucks of cash that's just lying there. They land by a skylight, smash it and drop ladders into the place. And the cops, they're not going anywhere. Ordinarily, they scramble a chopper of their own, but an accomplice of the gang has placed fake bombs at the police hangar and set

fire to the area, grounding them. The gang's circular saw their way into the safes, stuffed bag full of the cash, they fly off into the night. The helicopter touches down well out of town and the crims make their escape. Cops have been absolutely murked, embarrassed and the media tears them a new asshole. And Evan's story has tons of stuff on the phone records, media, cops, the lot. But actually most incredible is the helicopter pilot was a TV producer who they stopped trying a board of playing to the Canary Islands. But it takes the police years to track down the perps.

an Iraqi swede, Syrian swede, Bodjevich. I mean, you could say it was a bit of a bodge job, in fact. Terrible. Absolutely awful. Yeah.

But the 2009 heist also marks a kind of breaking point for the Yuga Mafia in Sweden in a way. There's still definitely Balkan organized crime in the country, but the robbery kind of splits them up, snaps off the leadership, and they're on the run,

disparate and disjointed. And of course, even now we've got Albanians running the drug scene in Western Capitals like London and Paris, plenty of crime coming out of the region these days. But since 2009, Swedish organized crime has shot off in a very different direction. And that is what we're going to dive into right now,

leading up to the gun crime epidemic the country finds itself in today. Yeah, I think when people hear Sweden crime now, they mostly think of, like, you know, grenades and guns and guns with, like, young kids in Malmo. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, pretty chaotic and pretty grim. And while gun crime has actually decreased across Europe, it's gone up in Sweden going all the way back to 2005,

according to Sweden's National Council for Crime Prevention, which is shortened in Swedish to Bra, which is funny if you're 14 like me. And for a long time, the epic, everyday epic, every-day epicenters of this epidemic is Malmo, right at the bottom tip of Sweden, not that far from here in Berlin, actually. And like I said before,

it's been the initial focal point for biker gangs crossing the bridge back and forth into Denmark but it's about to get way darker. Yeah, I always wondered like what strategically if there was any advantage to controlling the city but it sounds like it's just like a major transportation point coming from out of Sweden inside of it. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And there's Copenhagen as well, yeah. So for this, over to Slat and Abramovich.

He is one of the world's best footballers, a household name. His 2013 autobiography, I Am Slatan, is a story about a boy's rise to superstardom. But it's also a tale of immigration in Malma, and it's directly linked to the crime wave ripping through Sweden today. Zlatan grows up in a suburb of Malma called Rosengarde, a new build place that goes up in the 1960s and 70s. His father is Bosnian, his mother Croatian, and they're fleeing the chaos and the Balkans at that time,

and he grows up, he says, completely separate from the Swedish country. kids in the city proper. Quote, Swedish TV didn't exist for us, adding, we lived in a very different world from the Swedes. I was 20 when I saw my first Swedish film and I had no idea what the Swedish heroes and sports stars were. Says one of his school teachers in the book, quote, I've been at this school 33 years and Slat-an is easily in the top five of the most unruly pupils we've ever had. He was the number one bad boy, a one man show, a prototype of a child that ends up in serious trouble. What was his style of play like? I mean, did he show any of that number one bad boy behavior?

Yeah, absolutely. Like, he's really, ah, he's just like, it's really unique, scores amazing goals, really petulant, gets sent off a lot. I love him. I think he's great. Anyway, Zlatan joins his boyhood club, Malmo FF, which I think is Sweden's most successful club in Europe. and then he smashes it, heads off to Holland, Iax, Milan, Barcelona, even L.A. He's still banging in an ungodly amount of goals for A.C. Milan today, and he's nearly 40. The reason I'm saying this is that Slattan's upbringing actually mirrors that of so many young boys and girls in Rosengord, which basically becomes a low-income ghetto completely separated from the city, packed with people from the Balkans, Middle East, from the Iraq Wars, conflicts in Syria.

I think Afghanistan too, yeah? Somalia. Yeah, Somalia, big, big Somali Swedish community. So in 2008, by which times Latan's long gone and playing for Inter, an Islamic centre in Rosenghor becomes the epicenter for what cops call, quote, the most violent riots we ever had encountered. When the local council doesn't extend the place's lease, and local youths go apesh in response. When cops arrives to evict them a few weeks later,

they're met by 30 people who beat the place. them back. Setting fires to cars, trash cans, setting off fireworks. It's just getting mad, basically. And this sets off a chain of events that's going to rile up Europe's far right. Spur talk of so-called no-go zones in Malmo, pushed by reactive sheds like bright bar and so on. But this depressed, barely integrated and deeply segregated neighbourhood is roiling. And what comes out of it is a bunch of gangs. It's no coincidence that Malmour is a port city. I mean, what do we say here? ports and borders always trouble says a former MP quote we have the same problem here as in the north of Mexico they're on a smaller scale so it's logical for the gangs to gather here and fight

each other I mean that's flat-pack gangsterism and that is the only ikea reference you're getting in this episode but that's interesting right is this riot is it seen as like a starting point like everything comes out of it or it's more like this was the first clue that things were changing in a way that was not going to be good. I think that people knew for a while when the job started disappearing that it was in a lot of trouble, but this 2008 riot is really the kind of spark point

that kicks off a new era in crime. And yeah, in Malma's case, the shipbuilding and textiles that brought the guest workers in the 70s, the guys we spoke about at the top of the show, they disappear sharply when people start getting stuff from China, India, elsewhere. Sweden stops in point in folks for those.

those reasons, but then you have regular immigration for other reasons. And jobs stay stagnant, but apartments that have been built for laborers years back, they stay obviously. And by the time tensions rise over the mosque, up to 80% of people in Rosencorder unemployed. That is a Tinderbox. Is that true? Like that says the, that fact, 80% of young people or 80% of people are unemployed?

80% of people. That's all people. It's insane. I want to fact check you eventually. Yeah, and shout out to listeners. You can always fact check. Says the New York Times in 2011, quote, Rosengarde hardly has the look of a troubled ghetto.

Lawns and playgrounds abound. God, I hate that. But the area does not look like a traditional Sweden either. Satellite dishes hang from every balcony. The bakery sells Middle Eastern confections. Al Jazeera plays on the televisions. And young men huddle on street corners, casually bragging about doing battle with the police.

I think there's some casual racism by the New York Times. And it continues, quote, A few years ago, the fire and ambulance brigades would not even enter Rosengor without a police escort. Youth there threw rocks and set cars on fire. Police officials say things are much better now.

Fires were down 40% last year compared with 2009. But last month, two police vehicles parked at the station was set on fire with small homemade explosives. You know, in some ways, it kind of reminds me of gang control neighborhoods I've seen in like El Salvador and I've talked about this where, you know, there's like complaints

about the government not providing resources, which are accurate. But at the same time, any time, you know, you have fire and ambulance trucks going in there and they're getting threatened and attacked, you know, you can't complain about places not providing resources, but then any time an NGO or some sort of government entity wants to come in and actually help or give resources, they're attacked or not allowed to. You know, you can't have it both ways. Like, you got to choose one or the other. We're going to get into a couple of quotes later on as well where you can pretty much see that being fleshed out.

But this is a classic story, right? I mean, you get a country welcoming migrants so long as they build stuff for cheap. Then when they stay, there's no integration, no language training beyond the most basic stuff. If you're a QuickBooks customer looking to grow your business without the growing pains, you need the Intuit ERP. Upgrade to Intuit Enterprise Suite in a matter of hours. It's the AI native ERP from the makers of QuickBooks. Learn more at Intuit.com slash ERP. Then when the cops go, you've got a giant migrant population and they don't feel local.

In some cases, they don't even speak the language. They feel locked out of the labor market. They're hooked on welfare, attracted to the black market. Berlin, London, New York, I mean, literally everywhere. See, I disagree with that fundamentally. I mean, I can't speak for Berlin or London, but that's not really the story of New York, right? I mean, this is European countries are much worse at integration when it comes to immigrants than a place like New York is.

And I don't mean, like, New York is by no means perfect, right? But it's way better than these cities. Like, communities are nowhere near as isolated. They have a ton more opportunities in the labor market. And it's not easy, right? But people aren't really made to feel that unwelcome. You know, I'm sure people coming from the Middle East in the past five or ten years could definitely say otherwise right now.

But, like, I walk down my block. There's people from five or six different countries that own small businesses that are operating there, right? The kids are going to college. My Yemeni bodega, his son is in Colombia, right? It's an Ivy League school. The Korean dry cleaners kid is a Marine. You know, and I'm not just saying, using this as anecdotal evidence. It's like a, people are integrated far better here. So I really disagree with that characterization being the same as in New York. Obviously, you have immigrant communities that come here and there's a lot of poverty and it's a struggle and crime does come out of that, right? But it's not, it's not like a similar situation to what's happening

in Sweden right now at all. Yeah, I tend to agree with you, actually. I guess the difference in Europe is that there's so many different countries with different languages and pretty tight borders. So I don't know, like it's really hard to integrate people to that extent. So you guys are bad at Europe's bad at it. For sure. For sure, we're bad at it and we're good at it.

That's the bottom line. Or better, better at it. You're just better human beings, yeah. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it too. let that be the take home from this episode guys and at this time leo carmona remember that guy chinese the guy is in prison for life over the 2002 ollanda raid and the 2003 killing helsinki he actually forms a record label behind bars called cartelan cartel and they make tons of really dark violent gangster rap tunes that speak to this feeling of alienation for so many kids in the ghettos

of rosen gordon elsewhere and even many many years later that they make tons of the little years later later, cartel and outfits are still getting banned from festivals from promoting violence. And I mean, they are. Abba have got tunes like Money, Money, Money, Does Your Mother Know, the winner takes it all in the day before you came. And I mean, they could easily be tracks of a 50 cent album. It's terrible. Anyway, throughout this time, you've got a bubbling gang scene,

a depressed, desperate neighborhood, a port, a growing white wing, happy to blame everything on brown people. Sweden's actually getting pretty hairy. And I remember this actually, personally being in the news all the time. And it's always cited by people like Nigel Farage, and folks are talking about Lundanistan, all that crap. From 2009 to 2010, a skinhead called Peter Mang's, he actually goes on a shooting spree in Malma.

He kills two people and seriously wounds over a dozen more. He gets life inside. But a wave of execution-style killings is on the rise too. In 2011, a gang leader is shot dead. By 2013, Reuters is called him Malmoo, quote, Sweden, Chicago. So, sorry, Chicago or Malmoo, I'm not really sure. Since that first gang leader has dropped,

another eight go in a year, eight in a year. And again, Sweden's got a really, really low homicide rate, guys. Over 80% of those, they're gang-related. And there are other reasons for this. Sweden's cops are notoriously understaffed and its justice system is incredibly lenient especially on youngsters which it often dishes out community service

for actual shootings which is insane or maybe not depending on your opinion nah it's insane yeah it's insane right either way combined with all the other factors it's made Swedish gang crime completely chaotic contested by dozens of gangs and increasingly young

friend of the pog Jake Hammerham made a great stocko from Malmoo in 2017. A contact told him that these days young people they control the gangs. Quote, everybody wants to be in charge in Malmoo and this is how it ends. Simple as that.

Sweden goes through these successive waves of unrest during these years. In 2013, cops shoot a 69 year old man dead in the Stockholm suburb of Husby. So rioters set a Stockholm police station on fire and folks in Malmoo they burn up two

squad cars. Cops are starting to warn about a gun problem even back then too, says the deputy commissioner, quote, we believe it's linked to the prevalence of weapons. It's big. Here's a guy from Rosengord speaking to Vice in 2016, eight years after the riots. Quote, when I was five and six years old, Rosengor's felt safer. Now when I'm 16, it doesn't feel as safe. More drugs, more people die here, all kinds of criminality. Where I live, for example, a lot of people are fighting. There's a lot of uniformed and undercover cops around. I see them at night when I'm with my friends.

It's a lot worse to live here now. I wish we would move to somewhere else. Oh and guess where all those guns come from? Yep, it's the Balkans. Yuga Mafia guys have been smuggling in weapons from their homelands for ages and now Malmo in particular and the hoods of the local gangs are packing heat

in a country where barely anybody has a gun. This January, the global initiative against transnational organized crime, they released the report that claims that most of them come from Serbian gangs that traffic through family outfits and bikers. Most of them come across the bridge from Copenhagen. Hand grenade sell for just 12 bucks

and a third of all illegal handguns on Swedish streets, a Serbian Zastaravas. That, like, that grenade price can't be real. Like, there's no way. Yeah, I looked that up. I was cross-referencing it with like three or four different sources. Twelve bucks.

Jesus. I was mad. When do there's so many attacks? Yeah, yeah. Says Swedish investigator, Gunnar Apogran to Global Initiative, quote, what we've seen in the last few years

are organized crime groups mostly based in Serbia that set up proxies in Sweden to receive shipments of drugs and weapons. So they're still behind the scenes. And continues an OCCRP story, quote, groups receiving arms from these traffickers

include Swedish biker gangs and family-based drug syndicates. Others include youth gangs among Sweden's Somali diaspora as well as a notorious group of loan sharks that has exploited its own community of Orthodox Christian immigrants from the Middle East for decades.

And, I mean, that sounds shady a.F. And it leads to another grim phenomenon, which is the use of explosive devices in gangland attacks. In 2017 and 18, these are most limited to powerful firecrackers and Yugoslavia and M75 hand grenades. And they're concentrated in low-income hoods like Rosengarde. But civilians are also getting caught in the crossfire. In January 2018, for example, a 63-year-old man dies when he picks up a grenade in Stockholm thinking it's a toy.

A Dutch exchange student is also hit by a stray bullet during an execution-style killing at a pizza place in Uppsala. But in 2019, gangs start using homemade IEDs to terrorise neighbourhoods. That year, the NGO-intelligent fusion tracks 160 explosive incidents, the vast majority in its three major cities, with the blast getting bigger and more deadly. So bad did the bombings get that Denmark actually reinstate border checks, which is big in Europe these days, sorry Britain. According to an academic report, I read,

today's Swedish gangs are split into four main types. First, there are clearly defined groups with insignias and rules and established crimes, like the Yuga Mafia to a lesser extent, and the biker groups to a greater one. Then there are relational gangs, so gangs from the same family or clan or neighbourhood, even religion. There are thought to be 40 of these across the country. 40, but as many as 12,000 members. I mean, no wonder it's going crazy. And then there are bands of undefined gangs that are defined only from the,

outside. So these could be chances, just groups of powers who commit crimes, anything. And then there's the project-based group, thrown together to pull off a robbery, smuggling or an execution. This is your Grandfifter War I crew, or the G4S crew in 2009. And these days it's getting worse and worse, and it's more closely intertwined with the rap scene. In 2019, a year's long feud between two Stockholm gangs, the shotters and Dutte-Petreli, I think that's death patrol, death squad, exploded into violence when two men were found dead in their car in Copenhagen. One of those most affiliated with the Shotters is a really famous rapper.

It's called Yassin. He actually blew up in the charts while he was behind bars on gun crime charges, and he was jailed this year for a plot to kidnap a rival artist, which is nuts. In August 2020, rival gangs actually set up roadblocks in Gothenburg to catch rival mob members. And the maddest part isn't that. Cops didn't even arrest anyone. The four gangs involved in the feud met up at a hotel and they reached the truth on their own.

Malmo's shooting rate has actually gone down a bit. Across Sweden, they're still rising. From 334 in 2019 to 336 last year and 107 explosive detonations. I think one of the things Bjorn was actually talking about in the interview was how Mammo has calmed down a bit a decent amount over the last two to three years, so it's not nearly as bad as it was

when it kind of earned its reputation. Yeah, but it just seems to be going elsewhere. I mean, also, in August 2020, a 12-year-old girl is killed during a drive-by shooting at gas station outside Stockholm, and that just disgust the country. If we don't stop the new recruitment of young people into the criminal circles,

harsh measures will not mean anything. Home Affairs Minister Mikhail Danberg tells broadcaster SVT. But even crazier, the AK-47 used in that killing, police discover it's the same one used in a music video for a tune called Blue Cheese by 10 a N. I didn't name the song, guys. The band take it down, but it's back up on YouTube now so you can see it. It's so dark.

And then you get to this summer and the barbershop shooting that we got to at the start of the show. And then the final blow this year, Leo Komo, that's the Chinese, he's getting out of prison after 16 years. And by all accounts, he's walking into a gang scene that seems ready made for his return. The authorities just don't know what to do with all this stuff,

and it's just going to keep on going. So maybe we should get Dale to play us out with some ABBA just for something cheerful at the end of what's really a brutal, pretty scary tale. I mean, we might get copyrighted for him for him. Who knows? But, yeah, I mean, I guess, look, it is brutal and scary and this none of it's good but if you actually compare like the murder

rates of some of these of the worst cities in Sweden I don't even think it would make top 20 in the US so it's not even top 50 it's one of those things where we're like there's some nuance right you definitely have to have you have to be aware of the fact that like things are bad there if they're getting bad but comparatively speaking to like you know the US it's not uh it's wouldn't be considered atrocious in um here unfortunately So it's kind of like, you know, again, like we said, finding that middle ground between being like, there isn't a problem there where it's like, yeah, there is a problem. But it's not completely insane. It's just not very good.

But it's not very good. That's the TOD. Yeah. I think, you know, we've definitely had people reach out too with a lot of Swedish stories like this. So I think there's room to somewhere down the line for us to get back into all the different rivalries that have turned Mammo in the past into a war zone. Yeah. But yeah, let me just give some thank you to the folks that are supporting us, especially our dude P. Thomas, who we really came through.

Will Wintercross, Trey Nance, Matthew Cutler, Chris Pucamano, Ross Clark, Jeremy Rich, Doug Prenderville, Jared Levy. Hit us up, you know, anything you guys want to talk about, the Underworld Podcast at gmail.com, and patreon.com slash underworldpodcast for bonus episodes. We can try to get like one out a week, and it's always interviews. We might start doing some short stories soon. If you guys want to support And besides that, thank you again for tuning in and supporting us.

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