The Russians are supplying high quality cocaine
UDA terrorist Jackie McDonald
Loyalist crime bosses are turning a blind eye to paramilitaries in their terror gangs who are selling high grade cocaine at four times the normal price on the street.
UVF and UDA chiefs in south Belfast are fuelling a crime spree by offering coke at an eye watering £100 a gram – four times higher than prices being offered by street sellers.
In the past prices have rocketed when supplies of the drug have run dry, but this time the cost is based on the high quality of cocaine sourced by eastern European organised crime gangs and which is passed on to their loyalist partners in crime.
And we can reveal that the two terror groups have joined forces in the Sandy Row area to set up a drugs den from where they sell cocaine and other drugs. It is also where senior figures in both organisations can be found buying, selling and using narcotics.
The Sunday World is aware of the location of a recently established ‘club.’ A first floor room has been kitted out with pool and snooker tables and gaming machines, ‘customers’ are encouraged to bring their own alcohol for which they are charged if they want to consume it on the premises.
The booze is a weak front for the real purpose of the club – drugs.
Well-placed sources have told us there is no shortage of customers at the Sandy Row drugs club. People ring a bell at a nondescript door at street level. They are ‘buzzed’ in and are immediately offered cocaine at £100 a bag.
Much of the cocaine sold in Belfast is of poor quality. Greedy dealers cut the powder with anything from rat poison to baking soda. In some cases the drug is only two per cent pure, but it was the arrival of a drug running crime gang from eastern Europe which transformed the drugs landscape of Belfast.
Dubbed The Russians they muscled their way into the city’s drugs racket in direct challenge to the paramilitaries.
As previously revealed by the Sunday World they sell cocaine, heroin and crystal meth for a flat rate of £25 a bag. But it is the purity of their cocaine that draws the most business.
Believed to be as rich as 25 per cent pure, it enabled the Russians to take control.
Now they are supplying the UVF. In return for allowing them to operate in loyalist strongholds they not only take a small cut of the Russians’ profits but they are also kept in constant supply of drugs.
Sources have told us the coke is so good a gram is enough to keep them high for the weekend.
“Normally they would be going back to their dealers to get more, but this stuff is really high grade,” said our source.
“Usually they don’t have any left the next morning but with this stuff one line is enough to do them, which is why they are knocking it out at £100.”
The Russians are not concerned loyalists have jacked up the price as long as they only sell it to their own people and in their own drugs club.
Disturbingly the cocaine rush is being fuelled by a crime spree. Teenagers are being encouraged to burgle homes with orders to get their hands on electronic goods – TVs, laptops, smart phones, tablets – which are then sold in the drugs club for as little as £50-£100 per item.
The money is then used to buy cocaine.
“It’s a win win for the UVF and UDA, their runners make a fortune selling cocaine, the youngsters get the money for their drugs by selling stolen gear and the boys get cheap goods. Everybody's happy.”
The revelation that paramilitary leaders are making little attempt to cover their drug dealing antics will once again serve to underline the lie that loyalist organisations are anti-drugs.
The drugs club has been set up in the heart of UDA chief Jackie McDonald’s patch.
UVF goon Colin Fulton was a regular at another shebeen exposed by the Sunday World which was a front for drug dealing.
The Russians are now top dogs in south Belfast. The gang is up to is neck in drugs, people trafficking and prostitution running a series of brothels across the city including at least two in the Donegall Road area of south Belfast.
So lucrative is their Belfast operation that they have recently increased their presence in the city. At least eight further members of the gang have moved north, believed to be in the last few weeks.
Gang members live mainly in the Lisburn Road/Village areas.
Relations between the gang and loyalist paramilitaries, in particular the UVF, were initially fraught but in recent months the rival groups have been working hand in hand.
Last month we revealed details of an extraordinary offer from the Russians to “take out” three senior UVF figures who opposed their cosy drugs deal.
The Russians said they would use a hitman, based in Limerick, to travel north to assassinate three known UVF men opposed to the drugs trade before escaping back across the border.
The pledge to carry out the professional hit was made to senior loyalist paramilitary figures, who backed off only because they feared a backlash from their own community.
The organised crime gang is now working hand in hand with elements of the UVF – a relationship that has heightened tensions in the south of the city.
The gang, which is heavily armed, moved into the Donegall Road area last year and immediately clashed with local paramilitary figures.
One leading east European figure was lucky to escape with his life when an under-car booby trap fell from the underside of the vehicle as he drove off.
On another occasion a gang member narrowly avoided serious injury when a crossbow bolt was fired through the door of a house in the Village district.
The Russians set up an extensive drug dealing business and opened a number of brothels. Women forced to carry drugs continue to be trafficked across Europe before being forced to work in the sex industry in Belfast.
The Russians have upped the ante in the Belfast drugs trade selling high grade cocaine and heroin along with highly addictive crystal meth.
The Sunday World has also revealed they intend to introduce so called ‘zombie heroin' a horrific derivative of the drug which can cause human flesh to literally rot on the bone.